Bernadetta's Book of Fairy Tales
by signelchan
Summary: The head injury was inflicted on accident, but the resulting vivid dreams that Bernie experienced were nothing to need apologies for. In fact, she was going to be given enough material to write stories that she would want the world to see, once she changed the names in them, anyway.
1. Bernie and the Three Bros

The whole incident had happened so quickly that Bernadetta hadn't had enough time to realize she was in any sort of danger until she was on her back on the floor, her head throbbing and two men standing over her, both looking shocked (and in one's case, angered) at what had happened. "Whoa, didn't expect you to come out of your room anytime soon," Sylvain admitted with a shaky laugh, his eyes glancing towards the man next to him for a second before he was looking back down at Bernie, the wooden sword he'd slammed into her with discarded and sliding across the floor. "You just kind of snuck out of there, didn't you?"

"Don't attempt to put the blame for this on _her_," Felix muttered, not bothering to see how his words landed in his friend's ears before he was crouching down, offering the fallen woman a hand. "I deeply apologize for his buffoonery; you know how Sylvain can get when he's given a chance to spar with someone. Complete disregard for everyone and everything else that may be present."

"That's not true, first of all, and secondly, you're just pushing this onto me when you're just as guilty as I am!" Sylvain's voice had gotten louder as he tried to point out the flaw in what Felix had said, and the raised volume was enough to make Bernie's head ache more than it did from hitting the stone floor. "It was your idea to have the sparring match in here in the first place, you can't act like you had nothing to do with it."

"I will admit that I may have made that suggestion, but you were the one wielding your weapon like it was real, and you were the one who attacked someone who was otherwise completely uninvolved." Having had to grab Bernie's hand for himself after she just stared at him in a daze, Felix was getting her back to her feet, watching as she didn't seem to be able to see straight. "Are you going to be fine, Bernadetta? Do we need to call for someone? I know of someone who would make for a fine messenger."

She pressed her eyes closed, her world made up of stars and spirals behind her eyelids, and when she reopened them she felt like she was seeing even less straight than she was before. "I-I'll be fine," she assured him, trying not to make it obvious that she was not physically well in the slightest after the fall. "My head hurts a bit and I think it'd be best if I just…laid down for a while. Can…can I do that? Please?"

"I'm fairly certain you shouldn't lay down with a head injury, but I am not incredibly knowledgeable with medical things so I suppose I cannot tell you no." Felix's hand gripped hers tighter, followed with what sounded like something slicing through the air, followed by Sylvain yelping out in pain. "You go get someone anyway, as you're the one who knocked her down in the first place. She'll be in her room, like always, for whenever you return."

There was a lot of grumbling as Sylvain gave in to following along with the demand, and as he was leaving they were going back into the bedroom they were right in front of, Bernie not even fully comprehending where she was despite being incredibly familiar with the room she'd been calling home as of late. Her new home in Faerghus felt much warmer than her previous one had, even if the climate chilled her to the bone every time she so much as looked outside; that sense of warmth was absent as Felix led her to the bedside, trying to coerce her to lay down without saying a word. She felt like she was supposed to rebel against the silent demand, but something inside her urged her to go along with it, and go along with it she did; soon she was curled up on top of her blankets and quilts, Felix trying to pull them out from underneath her to wrap her in them. The last thing she solidly remembered before her eyes closed was him grumbling something about how difficult the situation was, but she couldn't find the energy to ask him if there was anything she could do to help before she was drifting off through pounding waves of pain.

When her eyes opened next she was not in her bedroom at all, nor was she anywhere she'd seen before in her life, and it was in that moment that Bernie knew she was dreaming to some extent. The forest she found herself in was unlike anything she'd ever seen in Fódlan, especially not anywhere close to where she now called home, and yet she didn't feel the overpowering need to hide herself away. In fact, she felt free to explore as she pleased, walking down a slightly-trodden path with wonder in her eyes as she looked at the towering trees, the leaves rustling as birds came and went. "This is amazing," she remarked, reaching out and touching the rough bark on one gnarled tree along the path, feeling it as if it were real. "I never knew I could dream so vividly!"

She giggled as she realized she could feel the grasses that made up the path tickling her legs, the sensation so lifelike that she would have thought it were some critter crawling on her if she didn't look down and see the grass for herself. Her soul felt so much at peace that she didn't ever want to leave the dream forest for anything. But the path winded on, and soon she was coming up to a clearing, the only notable thing visible within it a cottage that looked like it had seen much better days in its life. The stones making its walls were chipped and sliced, a training dummy decapitated and shredded near its front door, and yet, even with the homely and rustic look Bernie felt compelled to take a closer look.

"I-I'll just sneak a peek and be back on my way through the forest," she assured herself, picking up her pace as she ran towards the ajar front door. There didn't seem to be anyone around, she certainly didn't hear anyone talking or moving around inside, and with the door opened already she figured it couldn't hurt _too_ much if she went in to get a better look. Right away she could tell that she was meant to do exactly that, as the door swung open as she made her final approach, but there was no breeze or person around to cause it to happen.

That did give her a bit of a shock, but after she'd calmed herself down and steadied her heartbeat the best she could, she stepped inside the waiting house, hoping that she'd find some direction for where she needed to go next and be right on her way. The door slammed closed behind her once she'd entered, and she gasped, trying to let herself back out—but the damage was already done and it seemed to be jammed, or at least locked from the outside. "That's weird, a door that you can't open while indoors, and not because I locked it on myself. I…hope that's not a sign that this was a huge mistake."

She gave the door a hopeful push, finding that it wasn't going to budge, before turning to explore the house for somewhere to hide until she could leave. The main room seemed to be what she would consider normal for a house in such a location, filled with weapons and furniture made of animal furs that would have easily been hunted in the woods. There seemed to be three of everything, three chairs, three small tables, three hooks on the wall for hanging jackets. "Whoever lives here better be kind, or else that's the end for poor Bernie!" she squeaked, taking a closer look at the biggest of the three chairs to find that it was well-worn from top to bottom, implying that whoever usually sat in it was big enough to fill all its space. From there she looked at the medium-sized chair, which was rather plain aside from the sewn-in pocket on the side that was filled with papers covered in pictures; and finally, she looked at the smallest chair, which wasn't much smaller than the previous one but looked to be a lot sharper and dangerous than the two it was next to.

Convincing herself that she was in the home of people who would, under every circumstance imaginable, murder her for trespassing on their property, Bernie's goal became to quickly find a safe place to keep herself completely hidden from the residents, rather than just to hang out there until she was able to escape. Her feet carrying her as fast as they could, she ran into the bedroom of the house, finding three beds in varying sizes, much like the chairs in the other room. The largest bed was neatly-made, with no wrinkles in the blanket that covered it, and after peeking underneath it she found that it was completely solid down to the floor, making hiding underneath it impossible. The second bed was in not quite as nice of a state as the first one, but before Bernie could look underneath it she noticed that the blankets looked rather stiff and she couldn't fathom touching them. That meant that her last hope in the room was the third bed, which had the blankets thrown in a giant heap, as well as a sword draped across the pillows.

"Can't go under it," she said as she noticed that it was completely solid as well, "but who'll notice if I'm in those blankets? I can just hide there until the coast is clear, and then it's freedom for me!" Thinking about how it was funny that the script was flipped, and that she was trying to get _out_ of a place for once in her life, Bernadetta carefully hid herself in the pile of blankets, feeling their warmth and taking in their oddly-familiar scent as she tried to make it look non-obvious that she was hiding among them.

She must've lost all track of time while in there, the coziness too much to ignore, because the next thing she remembered, she felt toasty and warm, her body covered in sweat, and she could hear the unmistakable sounds of voices in the rest of the house. "I'm telling you, if the door was locked, that means we've got a visitor," one male voice told whoever he was with, striking Bernie's ears as a voice she should remember but she couldn't place a face to. "I really hope it's a lady, it's been a long while since we had one of those come around."

"Think with your head and not other parts for once, will you?" a second voice replied, sounding unamused but even more familiar to Bernie, as if the smell that she was wrapped in was connected to it somehow. "If someone's in here, that means we've got a rat to root out, and I'm sure we could use the weapon practice. Shall we search?"

Feeling the hair on her arms and neck bristling at the mention of searching for whoever was in their home, Bernie knew that her attempt at hiding until she could escape safely had backfired, and that she would've been better off to have stayed in plain sight until they had returned home. There was more conversation happening between the two men, but their words sounded jumbled and unintelligible to her ears as she was internally panicking, berating herself for what she'd chosen to do. She was just about to tell herself that no one would miss her too much when she inevitably never made it home when she heard people enter the bedroom, the breathing of three distinct people present.

"They are not in my bed," the third voice said, stern and steady. "If they were, the blankets would be askew and they are not, as you can see."

"Yeah, yeah, they're not in mine either," the initial voice pointed out with a heaving sigh. "Which is kind of sad, if they're an attractive lady I'd be impressed to see her laying in my bed of all places. What about you, Felix? Is she in your bed?"

Bernie could feel hands on the blankets she'd so carefully wrapped herself up in, shaking them and unwrapping them to reveal what was hidden inside; the moment a calloused hand touched her arm she couldn't help but scream and her revealing herself earned three loud announcements of finding who they were looking for. "It seems the rat called my bed home after all," Felix muttered, undoing the blankets until Bernie's entire body, curled up in the fetal position, was exposed for all to see. "What a surprise. Sylvain, grab me my sword so I can do the honors."

"Whoa there, no can do, buddy. You're not _killing_ her, she's got to have some reason for why she's here in your bed." Sylvain seemed insistent on getting some interrogation in, but Bernadetta would have much rather preferred death by Felix's blade than she would have talking to him. Yet, when she uncovered her head from where she'd been protecting it with her arms, she looked at the glaring man standing over her and her whole body felt like it was melting, an unexplainable sensation given the situation. She should have been trembling with fear, not feeling like she was somewhere that she actually wanted to be.

Before she had a chance to really consider why she felt like she did, the stern voice had something to present to them all: "I have an idea. Felix, you let the woman live, at least long enough for her to explain why she is in your bed. Sylvain, you keep yourself away from her long enough to not make her resent me for not letting Felix kill her. As for me, I shall prepare her a meal for her to explain herself over." He seemed to be the boss of the other two, based on how they both reluctantly went along with what he asked of them, and soon enough she was sitting on a log at their dinner table, there only being a chair for each of the men there to begin with.

"So, what's a pretty lady like yourself doing this deep in the Faerghus Woods?" the red-haired one named Sylvain asked, his hands curled up under his chin as he leaned in towards Bernie, her shrinking backwards to get away from him. "Last time we had any visitors that weren't friends of ours, ol' Felix scared them off with just a look. Kinda surprising you've stuck around this long."

She opened her mouth to speak but she was too terrified to say anything, her explanation catching deep in her throat. "Look, you're coming on to her too strong, do what Dedue said for once in your life and let the woman breathe." Felix, with his dark hair messily tied back out of his face, was side-eyeing Sylvain and not actually paying any attention to what expression Bernie was wearing. "It's obvious she's here as a spy from the Empire, and that means we're meant to kill her to keep the rest of the country safe."

"A girl like that acting as a spy? I doubt it, she's too cute to be asked to do much." The conversation felt like it was something Bernie should have been understanding, but there was too much disconnect from where she was compared to where she knew she belonged. It felt like her dream world—which she was still certain she was in—was pulling things from real life, but she couldn't make sense of what was real and what was fabricated. "Oh, don't look so concerned there, miss. What's your name? That should be a good place to start."

"M-my name?" Bernie seemed surprised to be asked that question, even though it made perfect sense, given that she was a stranger in their home. "W-why do you need to know that? Are you going to use it against me?" The men assured her that her fear wouldn't be realized and that it was a harmless question and she relaxed a little, but still hesitated on going through with introducing herself. "My n-name is Bernadetta. I didn't mean to get stuck in here, it was just that…your door…trapped me inside! Please don't hurt me!"

Sylvain leaned in even closer to her and gave her a wink. "Wouldn't dream of it, Bernadetta. You're safe here, as long as me and Dedue are around for you. Get stuck here alone with Felix and that's a different story."

"Stop scaring her," Dedue cut in, his voice sounding equally friendly and scolding. "She must have a reason for being here and telling her that Felix would harm her is no way to get it out of her."

"Right, right, let me just…get on that." Why Sylvain was the one in charge of interrogation, no one was going to explain, but he went right along with what was expected of him and asked Bernie a second time why she was in the woods. With a lack of response because she wasn't quite sure herself, he gave it a third attempt, and a fourth, and just kept on trying in different ways until he was interrupted by Felix giving an exasperated sigh. "What's that for? I'm just doing what was asked of me."

Shaking his head, Felix chose to point out the obvious, motioning with a single hand towards the cowering girl who'd buried her head under her arms against the table somewhere in the middle of the incessant questioning. "She isn't going to respond to you, you moron. Clearly she has no desire to speak to any of us, so let's just get on with getting rid of her."

"Not until she gets a meal." Setting down three bowls at the table, one for each of the normal residents, Dedue took a seat and looked across at his men. "We only have the dishes for ourselves, so she will have to share with one of us. Unfortunately that means she must taste our meals to find one to her liking, but we will manage."

Bringing her head up from where she'd hidden it, Bernie didn't like the sound of what had just been said but when she saw the three men all staring at her, concern in one pair of eyes, flirting in another, and disdain in the third, she was even less thrilled to have to take part. The only thing that drove her to actually grab a spoon and take a bite of the bowl closest to her (which was Sylvain's, based on how he seemed eager to share it with her) was the fact that she didn't want to keep them waiting before they could eat. Sylvain's meal was rather salty, and it dried her mouth out to taste it, something that became obvious with how she puckered her lips after swallowing. "Aw, guess you aren't a fan of salty dishes," he lamented, taking his spoon from her and taking a bite of his own meal, smacking his lips once he'd enjoyed it. "Compliments to the chef, it's delicious as always."

"I'll accept the kind words, but only once our guest has dined." Next came Dedue's own bowl, which he carefully passed over to her before sliding his spoon with it, and when she tasted it she felt it was better than what she'd tried before, but it felt much heartier and too heavy for her liking. She couldn't help but take forever having to chew on it before swallowing, something that Dedue noticed and apologized for.

That left Felix's meal for her to try, and he seemed apathetic to let her get her hands on it to begin with. "What, she's going to hate it as well and then she's going to starve, why should we waste our time on this song and dance?" he complained, before spooning her out a bite and passing only that much to her. It hadn't even hit her lips before she'd noticed that it smelled more appealing than either of the others had, and tasting it told her that she enjoyed whatever he was eating much more than his friends' dishes. That caught him by surprise, even as she meekly asked him for another bite.

"Ha, your bed, your dinner, it seems that Bernadetta here really has a thing for _you_, Felix," Sylvain said between bites of his food, while Felix was forced to share with the girl. "I can hear the wedding bells now, should we call for someone to come officiate? I'm sure I can get someone out here on short notice."

"N-no, that's not necessary!" both Bernie and Felix stammered at the same time, going red as they looked at each other and noticed what they had done. She felt so at home speaking in time with him that the mere idea was enough to pull her out of her dream world and back into the real one, her head pounding and her heart racing as she sat up in her bed, completely alone in the room like she was so accustomed to.

* * *

The unofficial diagnosis for what was wrong with her was that she'd sustained some sort of head injury, which anyone could have told them but the "healer" that (the real, not the fantasy) Sylvain had managed to find was a veterinarian, not anyone trained to work with people. There wasn't anything suggested for how to handle treating it, the poor woman that had gotten dragged in constantly talking about how she never dealt with that sort of thing in her animal patients, and after she was sent away and the bedroom was mostly empty Bernie felt like it was time to tell Felix what had happened when she'd dozed off.

"It was like I was in a whole different world," she explained, thinking about how vivid and real the dream had been, "and you were there, and so was Sylvain, but I didn't know you and you didn't know me and I…I still ended up being in love with you." She felt her face heating up at the admittance of feelings, but it was not unheard of for her to express those things with him in private, given that they were loosely engaged—the only thing stopping them from being official being that neither of them wanted to discuss it in public. "I-I feel weird telling you this, when you probably don't care, and I'm so sorry for wasting your time!"'

"No, Bernadetta, Sylvain bringing in some woman who knows nothing of humans is wasting my time. You telling me that you dreamt of falling in love with me, that's not wasting as much time as you'd think." It was clear that Felix was tired, the stress of watching the woman he cared for getting injured taking a toll on him, but he was doing his best not to sound unamused or annoyed with what she was saying. "Go on, I'm certain there's more to this than you've told me."

She bit down on her lip, hanging her head as she thought through the pros and cons to telling Felix more about the strange dream she'd had. But he was unrelenting on trying to convince her, as every time she looked up he was staring back at her with those tired, yet fierce eyes. "Okay, okay!" she chirped, trying not to sound like she was being murdered to spit her words out. "But you've got to promise that you're not gonna listen and decide that Bernie's too much for you to handle, got it?"

"Forceful, are we? I suppose I can give you that much."

His stare softened as much as a stare from Felix really could, and that was when she knew that she was safe to tell him, in as much detail as she could manage, about the dream forest and the house she'd stumbled into. With every sentence she grew slightly more confident in her retell, and his reaction turned from doing it solely out of love to being genuinely interested in how things turned out. "And then, after I ate your food, that was when I woke up," she finished after going through every minor detail she could remember, the images oddly vivid in her head even after being awake so long. "So now we're back to real time, and can I stop talking now?"

"Certainly. However, I must ask, are you planning on doing anything with this tale you've just spun for me?" The curiosity in Felix's voice was unusual, and it caught her so off-guard that she yelped and nearly threw herself backwards into the wall, which would have only made matters worse. "Forget I asked anything about it then, if you choose to act like that. I was merely thinking that it would be interesting to look back on your injury-related fantasies when you're well again."

"You…want me to write this down? So I can read it later?" Bernie hadn't really thought about wanting to keep the story anywhere that she could access it, but she could understand Felix's point about wanting to look back on it. Perhaps there was a part of her brain that was being used now that she'd sustained a head injury, and she needed to take advantage of it while she could. "That sounds doable, but, um…you might need me to bring me something new to write it in. Just, you know, not any of my other books, thanks! I don't want you seeing any of my stories…"

Felix cracked the tiniest of smiles at her worry about him reading something she'd written without his direction. "I'll see what I can find for you," he said, giving her a gentle touch on the knee before heading out of the room, coming back minutes later with what looked like a brand-new book and a collection of pens for her to use. "What are the odds that I have something like this laying around? My intention was to give them to you as a gift in the future, but the circumstances right now seem more fitting."

"These are amazing, thank you so much!" The cover of the book was a faded blue, with golden trim that reflected the light in the room, and when she cracked it open she found each page to be crisp and clearly lined, to make writing easier. The pens were just as fancy, all engraved with a tiny _B_ at the top to show that they were hers, and after situating herself in the bed she was right to work on her book, keeping all ink off of the covers and keeping her head from hurting too much as she focused on forming the words. Felix hung around for a while before deciding to find something else to do while she worked, claiming that he didn't want to disrupt her creative process, but she knew better; in fact, within minutes of him leaving she could hear him and Sylvain outside the room, having another mock battle as if nothing had happened.

As much as Bernadetta loved writing her own stories, she'd never had the words come as easy to her as she did there in that bedroom, rewriting her dream so that the world could someday read it. Usually she was so afraid of people seeing her writing, but this time she felt like it was something that needed to be shared, her big break in the literary world, and she wanted to make sure that it was perfect. That meant adding details here and there, describing the house in the woods more, making the three men who lived there feel like they had more importance in the story. It felt strange writing them all with their actual names, but she was in no place to come up with new names for any of them, and that was something she could always change when she prepared to share it with the world.

Her appetite for writing was so great, it overrode any appetite she had for actual food and she never once felt like she needed to stop for a meal as she wrote and wrote, her story spanning pages in her most careful lettering. She finished with a proper ending, not just the one her dream had ended with, and then she waited for Felix to come back to show him what she'd accomplished in that day. He returned to her eventually, and was fine with reading the book to check what she'd written against what she'd said, and even though he was typically stoic he seemed enthralled with the story up until the end.

"It's a…bit strange to read you writing about me in such a way, but it is what it is," he told her after he'd finished, closing the book carefully as to not crease any pages on accident. "But a solid ending, much better than what you'd originally shared. What comes next, do you think? Another chapter in the story, or something else?"

"I-I don't know," she replied, feeling like expectations were being hoist upon her shoulders now that her story had been written. "What I do know is that my head's hurting again, so maybe I should…fall asleep and see what happens."

He nodded, seeing where she was going with that thought. "If another dream comes to you, please do not hesitate in writing it down. I am curious about what you may imagine next, although if it's anything like this in terms of content I may worry slightly about you. How could you _ever_ imagine that Sylvain and I could live under the same roof by choice?"

"That's something you have to take up with my brain, not me." Hearing Felix take offense to that part only made Bernie feel like she'd done something right in having that dream to begin with, but she had no idea that over the coming days, she'd be putting them all into much more bizarre situations without any way to control what was happening. All she knew in that moment was that her head was hurting and that she needed to fall back to sleep, and that whatever happened when she closed her eyes was not her doing.

* * *

**A/N: this is my first 3H fic that I am posting and I am so excited to see where it goes? I have a few fairy tales I'm gonna be rewriting as Bernie's dreams and you'll just have to see who gets what role in them~**


	2. Two Little Mermaids

With the door to the room locked tight, Bernie felt like she was safer than if she was anywhere else in the palace, her father unable to get inside and berate her because the only key to opening the door was in her possession. She sighed, flicking her long, dark tail as she turned away from the door to face the rest of her cramped room, barely big enough for a grown mermaid such as herself. "No one's going to be yelling at you today, Bernie," she assured herself, before diving down close to the floor, pushing aside a crate that was sitting against the wall to reveal a hole behind it. "Not when you're not even gonna be here to hear it if it happens."

Staying inside her room was preferable, but it was still too close to her father and his unrealistic expectations and his bitter wrath for her liking, and so she'd created a way out of the palace through what had formerly been a crack in the wall. Of course, she hadn't created this tunnel solely on her own, and once she'd knocked right inside the mouth of the hole two creatures popped out of it, a green fish with a smaller blue companion, both greeting her with a whispered hello. "You're at this early today, don't you think?" the green fish asked, while the blue one darted towards the door, checking to make sure no one was around. "I mean, usually you give me time for one nap before we're off."

"I know, but I have a good feeling about what might happen to us today," she replied, catching the blue fish as he zipped back over towards the hole. "And what have I warned you about getting too close to the door, Caspar? If my father sees you, that's the end of all of this and all of us!"

He wriggled his way out of her hand and avoided answering the question, going straight to the hole and disappearing into it. "That's typical Caspar for you, hot-headed as always. Let's just go before there's a chance he causes any actual trouble."

"Y-yeah, let's go," Bernie agreed, waiting for the green fish to follow his friend before she went as well, being careful to put the crate back over the opening after she'd passed through it. The tunnel wasn't very long, and it put them just outside the palace walls once they exited it, their way out obscured by seaweed that lined the entire dwelling. She was surprised to see the two fish already heading away from the building without her, and she had to pick up her speed to catch back up, despite being much larger than either of them. "What's with going so fast, Linhardt? I didn't think you had it in you."

"Caspar insists we get to the hideout quickly, he says he feels it in his gills that something big is going to happen." Linhardt sounded indifferent as he spoke, but he was clearly straining himself to keep up with his speedier friend, to the point that Bernie took pity on him and grabbed him, allowing him to rest while she did the swimming to keep up. Their hideout wasn't too far from the palace, and it was her favorite place in the entire underwater empire to get away from her father, but she knew that someday trouble would find them while they were hanging out in there.

Whatever was causing Caspar to think that there was something exciting happening became obvious after they got inside the abandoned hull of a ship they called their hideout, and from some of the busted windows they could see a parade of sorts gathering near the palace belonging to the Adrestian emperor. "Wow, I didn't know that they were going to be having a protest today," Bernie mumbled, looking at the crowds they could see in the distance. "My father's probably there, which means _I _should probably be there, which means…oh no, Bernie's going to get in trouble next time she sees him!"

"Hold on, this isn't just a normal protest," Caspar corrected, clearly knowing something that the others didn't. "I heard from some of the catfish that this is just people trying to get the emperor to bend to their demands or make him pay. But since the emperor doesn't do much of his own…well, you get that there's nothing good coming of this."  
"Interesting, I would have figured that someone would have pointed that out to the emperor by now," Linhardt mused, before swimming away from the window to check one of their other vantage points of the scene. He was back almost instantly, sputtering and trying to put words into the air, but he was unable to speak for some reason.

Before Bernie could ask what had startled him, she felt something long brush against her back and shoulders, and she yelped in surprise, catching Caspar's attention and causing him to look away from the march to see what was happening there in the ship. "I don't mean to alarm you, Bernadetta, but it looks like you've got an…eel? on you?"

"Astute observation, fish," the eel replied condescendingly, their long body wrapping its way around Bernie to trap her where she was. "Now all three of you, come with us. Lady Edelgard insists on seeing you, in a more private place." Unable to give anything more than a whine at being trapped like she was, Bernie had no choice but to go along with the eel's demands, and her fish friends tagged along with them for the journey. They were taken out of the ship and towards where the protesters had gathered, signs in their arms and their tails ready to be used as weapons as needed, but before they got too close they veered away and into a small hut nearby, with a woven roof and a metal door that latched when they entered.

As the eel unwrapped themselves from around Bernie and she was able to hide against the wall, a mermaid came from the shadows of the other side of the hut, her flowing white hair trapped between two large horns. "I'm glad to see you've been able to join me here, Bernadetta," she said with a fake smile, offering a hand to shake but finding no taker. "You know, I have heard quite a bit about you from your father, always complaining about how his daughter does nothing useful and refuses to look him in the eye. I could use someone with your set of talents, if you're offering to share them."

"What do you mean, her set of talents?" Linhardt asked, but he was silenced by the eel slithering towards him and whispering something in his direction, which also stopped Caspar from interjecting anything as well.

"Let Lady Edelgard speak her piece before there are any outside comments," the eel announced to everyone once they had the silence they needed, the only sounds the distant voices of the protesters. "Time is not on her side at this moment and she would prefer there to be no deaths over this."

"Now, now, Hubert, please be kind to our guests. After all, if it wasn't for their ineptitude, we never would have found Bernadetta without going to her father to ask for her, and you and I both know that doing that would have fared poorly for her and us." Edelgard, with her crimson tail slowly splashing behind her as she stared at Bernie, still offering the hand for shaking. "I would like to first make a proper acquaintance with our esteemed guest before we get into the details of why she's here."

Predictably, Bernie was too timid to speak, even when the eel's grip tightened around her, but she did find it within herself to at least reach towards the waiting hand to gingerly shake it. Edelgard's grip was firm but she only held their handshake for a second until she moved right along with things. "There we go, was that so hard?" she asked, her head tilting to one side nearly to the point that her horn was brushing her shoulder. "Now that we've properly met, let me explain why we've brought you here, in a way that your little friends may understand as well."

"Hey there, we're not stupid just because we're fish!" Caspar exclaimed, visibly growing angry at the way he and Linhardt were being referred to. "Besides, I know _you_ know that we're not dumb!"

"Ignoring the outburst there," Edelgard continued, swimming closer to Bernie to take a closer look at her trembling face, "I just want you to know that your participation in what I have planned will mean great things for the Empire, because I've heard so much about you from your father. He's told us so many times that you're useless and will never make for a good wife, and if we can use you as a distraction…" She chuckled, looking towards her eel who slowly began loosening his grip on Bernie. "Well, I can say that Adrestia will be a power in both the sea _and_ on land after we're through."

Once she could breathe properly again, the feeling of the eel's body no longer restricting her and her movement, Bernie glanced around for a way to escape but found herself looking back at Edelgard with wildly-flickering eyes. "I d-d-don't think I understand what you want with me," she admitted, bringing her hands in front of her face to try and hide herself. "I'm a mermaid, I can't do anything on land, and neither can you, and—"

"Ah, you're going to look at things that way and try to resist. I see, I see." Tapping her fingers on the side of her tail, Edelgard's face was trying to stay fakely positive but she was beginning to clearly grow agitated at how her plan was not working. "Explaining this to you will take more time than we have right now, given that the prince of Faerghus and his allies are to be directly overhead in moments."

"—a prince?" Bernie's hands came down slightly, so that she could see Edelgard clearly once again. "What does a human prince have to do with anything?" She knew what Faerghus was, the kingdom above the water where the Adrestian Empire made its home, but she didn't quite get why Edelgard wanted anything to do with the humans in the first place. Merfolk and humans were not allies by any means, although legend said that they were once the same and split when they could no longer get along, so for the future emperor to be so focused on a human prince made no sense to Bernie. But she was not going to get her answers, not when Edelgard ordered for Hubert to "take care of her", leaving her wrapped up once more and led into a different room of the hut, one with another young mermaid laying on her stomach on the ground, looking incredibly bored.

"It's about time someone else joined me," the other girl said, pushing herself up to meet Bernie with a smile much more genuine than the one Edelgard had used. "I was beginning to think Edie and Hubie tricked me into joining them for nothing."

"We would never do that to you, Dorothea," he insisted with a sneer, letting go of Bernie and watching her try to flee out the door they'd entered through, but it had already closed and she could hear Edelgard, Linhardt, and Caspar all arguing about setting her free. "What Lady Edelgard wants, only those she's chosen can make succeed. I disagree with her choice in candidates and her plan for you two, but as long as you can get the human prince to abandon his bride and follow you to the water by himself, everything will work out."

"I'm a singer by trade, Hubie, of course I can seduce a man to leave someone. Why you've selected a wallflower like Bernie here, though…eh, whatever Edie wants, right?" Dorothea reached back and tossed her hair side to side a few times before letting the still water carry it, while Bernie shrank into the corner, scared for her life that this stranger knew her name and that she was expected to do something without her agreeing to do it. "Between the two of us, we have enough charm and class to get the prince to the water, so that Edie can have her way with him. Easy enough…but there's a catch, isn't there?"

Hubert was in the process of using his long, thin tail to flip through pages of a discarded tome that was sitting in the corner of the room, while he watched his captives carefully. "No catch at all, we need this to be a situation you can succeed in, not one that you are set up to fail. I know you have heard this before." The water in the room was beginning to crackle with electricity, shocking Bernie into retreating further into the corner, while Dorothea continued to try to get more information out of the eel. But try as she might, Hubert didn't seem interested in sharing more of the plan with them both, and soon the water was growing warmer and warmer, shock waves rippling through it.

The last thing Bernie could clearly remember was seeing Dorothea turn to her, ignoring the eel completely, and assuring her that they'd be able to stick together through it all, and the first thing she noticed when she seemingly came to was a stiff breeze. Her eyes felt like they were sealed shut and she struggled to open them, having to bring her hand up to them and carefully pry her eyelids apart. The light was harsh and warm, but felt cool compared to the water she'd felt herself boiling in, but it was quickly obscured by a red-faced man whose hair was tight to his head and his teeth were bared in a scowl. "Just what in the world are you doing out here?" he hissed, leaning down closer to her until she could feel his breath on her skin, a sensation she'd never actually felt before. "To be in such a state in the presence of royalty, what kind of person are you?"

She didn't know what he meant or how she was supposed to answer, and the man took her silence to be something negative. "Clearly neither of them have any idea how they ended up like this," a second voice said, coming from somewhere nearby. Bernie could feel slow movement underneath her back, like the current of the water she sometimes let carry her while she was out with her fish companions, but she didn't feel the water around her anymore. In fact, she felt the dryness that she felt the single time her father took her up to the surface, where she was lifted out of the water and felt like she couldn't breathe. "How funny is it, though, that we come out with the prince for a day on the sea and we end up finding _two_ hot girls to take back to shore with us. Guess he's not the only one getting lucky today, huh?"

"Oh, yes, the boar will be so enthused to see what we've caught." The man staring down at Bernie backed off, before throwing some sort of cloth at her. "Wrap yourself in the towel and don't move until we get you some real clothes to wear. The less questions we can cause by your presence the better."

She slowly nodded, trying to sit up but finding it much harder in the dry world than it ever was under the water's surface. The biggest shock came once she finally figured out how to get up on her own, and she noticed that instead of her dark tail she had short human legs, which were completely bare of anything except marks from dry water. In fact, she was completely nude, barring the towel the man had thrown at her, and the sheer shock of seeing herself not just as a human, but as a naked one, was enough to make her want to scream—except when she opened her mouth not a sound was made. Confused, she wrapped herself in the towel and waited for further orders, while across the planks of the human boat Dorothea was doing the same thing, although the man who had been assisting her seemed much more interested in watching her as she wrapped herself up.

The former mermaids were unable to get together to figure out what had happened to them until much later that day, when the sun had set and they were forced onto the land from the boat they'd been rescued into. The two men that had been assisting them (their names were Sylvain and Felix, they learned that by listening to them talk between themselves) had led them from the dock to the palace not far from the shore, taking them deep into the building and locking them in a room with nothing but wooden slats for beds and telling them they'd be back to interrogate, with proper clothing, later. In the moment immediately following them leaving, Dorothea looked at Bernie, gave her a smile, and opened her mouth to speak, but found no words to fill the air. She closed her lips and frowned, before trying again to the same end.

"I think they took our voices," Bernie managed to say, surprising herself as she'd been so sure she couldn't talk when in the presence of the men. "O-or maybe just yours? Does this mean that Bernie's got to be the one to speak to them? Oh no, I can't do that! We're going to die!"

Dorothea waved one of her hands to try and calm Bernie down, because she wasn't able to assure her things would be fine with her words. It was useless, and so the panicking that they were sent up to the shore to die lasted until Bernie finally tired herself out and she fell asleep on the uncomfortable bed, Dorothea doing the same not much later. When morning came they were still in the room together, with only the towels to wear and no way beyond pantomiming for one of them to talk to the other.

That changed relatively quickly as one of the men returned, his arms laden with gowns for the ladies to put on. "Sorry about leaving you ladies in here overnight without anything to wear," Sylvain apologized, as he unlocked the door and passed the dresses inside to the waiting pair. "I wanted to come back right away, but Felix thought we needed to address the situation with the prince before we came to you and…well, he didn't want to come back now, clearly. Get dressed so we can properly introduce you to the man of the castle, before he thinks that we're making you both up."

The process of putting the dresses on was absurd for them both, as they'd never needed to clothe more than their upper halves before, but with them helping each other and Sylvain at least being courteous enough to look away as they dressed they were soon ready to take on the world. "Eh, we'll be inside, there's no need for you to have shoes," he said as he reopened the door and let them carefully walk out, the skirts on the dresses brushing against their legs and them stepping around as if they'd never really walked much. "Besides, I'm pretty sure if we put shoes on you, you'd both fall on your faces. What's with the strange walking?"

For obvious reasons Dorothea was unable to answer, but when Bernie tried speaking she found herself without her voice once again. That meant they both stared blankly at Sylvain until he turned around, shrugged the question off, and began leading them elsewhere into the castle. While they walked, he talked about himself, and about how he usually wasn't allowed to be in the presence of such beautiful ladies by himself, but "Felix really didn't want to come deal with you, so he left it to me," he told them confidently, as if it was a positive thing to be said. "He doesn't trust you, and would rather talk to the prince than have to walk you up to him, and I can tell you that's a big deal."

Lagging behind by several steps, her foreign legs feeling so strange every time she lifted one and stepped back down with it, Bernie wished she could ask the man to stop talking, or if she could go back to where they'd stayed overnight. She hated this "being human" thing, even if Dorothea was taking it in stride, and she wanted to go back to her bedroom under the sea and spend the rest of her life hiding from her father's wrath. But there was no way for her to ask for that, and she couldn't simply disappear without causing a scene, so she had to tag along even though every ounce of her was begging to not.

They eventually made it to a grand throne room, which looked similar to the one that was found in the imperial palace in Adrestia, although in place of mermaids and fish there were other humans milling around. The main focus was the throne and its adjacent seat at the top of a small staircase, both being sat on by people wearing regal garb, with Felix standing at the side of the throne. "Those would be our lovely stowaways from the fishing trip yesterday," he said loudly enough for the ladies and Sylvain to hear, even if he sounded completely annoyed with having to say it. "Found face-down in the water with not an inch of clothing on their bodies. It was a miracle you happened to never come by to see it."

"A miracle indeed," the prince replied, standing up from his throne to come down the stairs, meeting the ladies halfway up them. "What were you doing in the middle of the Adrestian Sea? Are you spies? Refugees? You certainly don't look like you've come from anywhere outside of Faerghus…" For being royalty he seemed to have no qualms about talking to them himself, even if Felix (as well as the woman in the smaller seat) looked pained to see him talking to strangers as he was. When neither woman answered, although Dorothea did look like she was melting just looking at the fair-haired prince, he gave a firm nod, glancing towards Sylvain. "You and Felix shall be in charge of figuring out their identities and helping them find their way home. They certainly look like they mean no harm."

"And so the boar prince gives his command," Felix muttered, coming down the stairs to stand next to Sylvain, who seemed enamored with the task he'd been assigned. "I assume this is so that they cannot interfere with the royal wedding, hm?"

The prince did not seem to be bothered by Felix's name for him in front of their guests. "That may be something to do with it, but I hope that you have them escorted back to their homes long before we get to that point! Why, we still have weeks until then!" It was while he was speaking of what must have been his own wedding that Bernie actually looked at the prince, beyond the glance she'd first given him while he was up on his throne. He wore no traditional crown, but he had a heavy cape upon his shoulders that buried him in fur, but did not distract from his long, unkempt blond hair or the eyepatch that covered part of his face.

If this was the prince that Edelgard had been talking about, then this was the man that Dorothea needed to take down to the shore for whatever reason, and she seemed more than ready to take on that job right away. She was reaching towards him, trying to grab his attention, but every time her hand went for him one of his retainers kept her in line, frustrating her because she couldn't say a word. Noticing this, Bernie remembered what she had been told her task was, and she attempted to distract the two so that Dorothea could get her way, but the only thing she succeeded in was getting them both escorted away, leaving the throne room back on the path to where they'd been before.

This, as Sylvain said, was going to be the time for their interrogation, and they wouldn't be leaving until they had answers. The men must have noticed that the women tried to tell them who they were, and what they were there for, but they never said a word about it, only making remarks about how silent they were. "I understand that the boar wants to not cause any trouble to jeopardize his wedding, but these two have clearly taken a vow of silence and are spies from an enemy territory," Felix determined after hours of talking to no response. "If we send them back across the water, they may make it to Brigid, but neither of them…look like that's where they came from, you know?"

"That's what's bugging me here too. They were out in the open water, they can't have come from anywhere in the Alliance territory, but they definitely didn't have any marks to say they came from Brigid…" Tapping his chin as he looked between the two, fixating on Bernie's short, messy purple hair (which had always been so long underwater, she remembered) for a moment before moving to Dorothea's doe-eyed look, Sylvain finally conceded with a shrug. "I've got nothing, if we're being honest. They're not from Faerghus, they're not from the Alliance, I'm almost certain they're not from across the sea. They, like, don't have a home, maybe?"

"That makes them refugees and they have to have come from somewhere, you idiot." The whole situation seemed to be making Felix more frustrated with every passing second, especially with how Sylvain was clearly not too bothered by the fact that they had no clue where the mystery women came from, if only because they were cute. "But I suppose where they come from doesn't matter, as long as we get them out of here. Shall we deposit them back in the water where they were found?"

"Harsh, don't you think?"

"It's that or we take care of them until their spy mouths open up and tell us where they belong, and I don't particularly feel like babysitting." It was clear that one of them was much more serious about the task than the other, but the intimidating air that Felix had around him made Bernie wish she could tell him everything, to prevent any sort of trouble from happening. She really didn't know what Edelgard had wanted with the prince, or why she needed any of this to happen, but what she did know was that she hated being unable to speak up for herself for the first time in her life.

To rectify this, Bernie looked at Dorothea, who was glancing from Felix towards the opened door behind them, judging if she could make a run for it. That wasn't going to be helpful, so she took it upon herself to reach out and timidly tap the man's arm, getting his attention. "Don't touch me," he snapped, watching Bernie recoil at his tone, before he rolled his eyes and let his whole defensive stance soften. "Okay, perhaps that should be allowed given that you can't talk. What do you want from me?"

She slowly began to smile at him, bracing herself for the inevitable failure of what she was going to do—and the moment she attempted to mouth what their objective was at him her lips froze and she couldn't break from her smile. "I think that one's taken a liking to you," Sylvain remarked, nudging Felix with his elbow. "Look at how she's grinning at you. Not anyone would do that to a frigid guy such as yourself."

"I'm fine without being flirted with, thank you." His tone was still angry, but he didn't say anything more on the matter, until they decided to lock the ladies in the room again for another day. Food was provided, but they weren't exactly allowed to leave for any reason, which was frustrating given why they were on land in the first place.

But every time they knew they were absolutely alone, Bernie's voice would come back to her, and she would talk about what she wanted to do to solve their problem. "I was sent as a distraction for those men, we need to separate ourselves somehow," she said, Dorothea eagerly nodding along. "Then you need to find the prince and take him to the water, but what about the woman he's marrying? W-won't she go with? Ugh, this is all too much for my brain, I'm nothing but a failure and a—"

"Who's talking in there?" Sylvain's voice called out, coming down the corridor to check on the ladies. Naturally, the moment she knew he was there Bernie couldn't say another word and they weren't about to rat her out and jeopardize their plan. "Must've been the ghost of the dungeon I heard, sorry to accuse either of you. I'm not exactly used to being Prince Dimitri's retainer, his usual guy's just too busy with wedding preparations to do his job right now. Trust me, if he was around, you'd be wishing you had me and Felix watching over you, that's just how it'd be."

Sylvain seemed so friendly and genuine that it was somewhat frustrating that Bernie couldn't tell him what was going on, because she felt like she would have been able to trust him with the truth. But Dorothea didn't see it that way, she saw him as an obstacle between herself and the man she'd been told she needed to seduce to the water, and she crossed her arms over her chest looking at the man through the door. "Whoa there, what's got you so upset?" he asked, only for her to toss her curled brown hair over her shoulder, looking indignant as she did. "That's not an answer, that's only giving me more questions. What's going on with you, I didn't forget to feed you, did I?"

To answer that question, being as helpful as she could, Bernie picked up the tray that had been used to deliver their meals, and he seemed thankful she'd done that much. "Well, if it's not hunger, is it that you need a change in scenery? Do you want to leave for a bit? I can take you around, show you the castle, if that's what you're looking for." They both nodded, even though they had no idea what would happen if they agreed to his offer, and he opened the door to let them out, leading them in a different direction than the one they'd gone to get to the throne room.

While they were on their way, he was talking about how the ladies in Faerghus weren't as kind to him as they were, which made Bernie wish that she really could tell him what their actual purpose there was. This man was beginning to get convinced that these ladies liked him, when they really didn't, and it was going to be painful to see him realize the truth when whatever Edelgard was planning happened.

He led them out to a balcony in the castle, which overlooked the vast sea, the last rays of the day's sun splashing out over the waves. "We aren't here at this castle too often," he said, resting his elbows on the railing and leaning into it, the ladies following his actions because they didn't know what else to do. "Usually we're up in Fhirdiad, which is colder, more miserable, and with even fewer kind ladies like yourselves. At least here I've gotten to meet the two of you, and if we haven't figured out where you belong by the time the prince packs up to head home, maybe you can both come with me, or I can stay here with you."

"Why are you out here with the prisoners?" they all heard Felix ask, followed immediately by the sound of metal hitting the ground. "I thought I told you to check on them, not bring them out so they could plot your murder." At the mention of murder, the ladies both turned around to see that Felix was holding a sword in his hand, which he'd tapped on the ground to draw their attention towards him. "The boar wants to come out here, and it's not going to happen if you're here with the prisoners, so take them elsewhere."

Dorothea visibly tensed up, recognizing "the boar" as meaning the prince she needed to get close to, but Bernie's attention was less on the words and more on Felix himself. Getting Sylvain to follow her blindly, that would be easy, but Felix would be an entirely different problem to solve. How was she going to convince someone who seemed to want nothing to do with either of them that he needed to follow her somewhere? She found herself staring at the man as he impatiently waited for any action to be taken, earning his ire when he noticed her gaze. "Can I _help_ you?" he snapped, and she rapidly shook her head, looking back at the scene off the balcony.

Somewhere out there, under the water's surface, was Adrestia and her father and the life she'd known up until the day before, and she wished she could go back to it without any consequences. But Bernie knew that failing this task would not end well for her, and she needed to come up with a plan to make whatever Edelgard wanted happen without a hitch. She leaned out over the balcony, reaching towards the water, and closed her eyes tightly; in her mind she imagined she threw herself over it, landing somewhere not quite in the sea and not quite on the land she'd been dragged to.

In reality, she was pulled away by the still-unamused Felix, and everywhere his fingers touched felt pain as he gripped her tightly. She couldn't protest his actions, so she merely went along with things until she was back in the cell, Dorothea right behind her after being pulled down by Sylvain. "Good night, ladies," the redhead said, while his partner left without a word, "and don't get too comfortable with the ghost, you hear?"

They stared at him blankly, but once he was gone they were looking at each other, one wondering what the other was thinking and the other hoping that a strong plan would be spoken into existence soon enough. The problem was, Bernie could come up with her half of a plan to some extent, but they'd spent so little time in the presence of the prince that she had no clue how to get Dorothea to convince him to go to the shoreline. This was something she admitted to several times before they fell asleep in the same positions they'd taken the night before, and when they woke up it was on their own time, no one waiting around for them. They spent most of that day there in the cell, the retainers coming by a couple times to check on them but them not being allowed out until nightfall, when Sylvain took them up to the balcony again to show them the moon's reflection on the water.

He seemed really fixated on getting them to like him, and that was going to make Bernie's job easier, she was sure of it. However, that didn't solve Dorothea's problem in the slightest, although by that point she was certain her companion was coming up with a plan of her own to break away from everything and seduce the prince. "You two really aren't going to speak to us, are you?" he asked, watching them looking out over the water. "Kinda sucks, I bet you've got lovely voices that we'd love to hear, but I get it, you're not here to make friends."

"Out with our guests again, I see." This time, instead of being interrupted by Felix, it was the prince himself who came to join them, slipping out from inside the building still wearing his regal robes. "I can't blame you, Sylvain, but perhaps you should make sure that they should be outside of their cell. We can't allow anything to happen to any of us, and who knows their true motives."

"You've been spending too much time with Felix," Sylvain replied with a chuckle, scratching the back of his head when he saw that the prince was not playing around. "But you're right, I should've asked you first. I'll take them back inside right now, sorry about that."

The second he tapped Bernie's arm to get her attention, she turned to look at him with wide eyes, before nodding and heading towards the door back to their cell. She didn't even realize that she was walking alone until she didn't hear any other footsteps following hers, and she stopped her forward progress to check the scene. Sylvain wasn't there, and neither was Dorothea, and she didn't know what she should do in that moment other than stand there and wait. "No, Bernie, you can't waste this time," she told herself, balling her hand into a fist and slamming it down into her other, waiting hand. "If you don't act, you'll never get anyone where they need to go!"

"Who's down there?" Felix's voice echoed through the stone corridor and she yelped, all the confidence in her actions disappearing at once. When he appeared, he looked cross and concerned, almost as if he was expecting someone else to be standing there. "You! That was your voice I heard, wasn't it?"

Bernie shook her head, before realizing that if she tried to explain she could prove that it couldn't have been her. "W-well, you see," she squeaked out, before jumping at the sound of her own voice in the presence of the man, who looked just as surprised as she was. "O-oh! I can talk again! I can…" Her voice faded as she found herself struggling to breathe, and she grabbed at her throat, gasping for air, only to find herself losing her balance on her feet and slipping to the ground, Felix watching her dramatic display with eyes showing much more anger than concern, despite the circumstances.

"You're a dirty mermaid," he said as he watched her feet, which had once been visible underneath the dress, turn into the fins she'd had all her life. "A dirty Adrestian mermaid here to cause nothing but trouble! I should leave you to _die_ here, but…" In a moment of weakness Felix bent down and picked her up, as she swore that her last moments were beginning to be upon her. "Starting a war with the mermaids is the last thing we need right now. I'll send you back, this time."

As he carried her out of the building and headed down for the shore, Bernie used what strength she could to look up at the castle, seeing that Dorothea, Sylvain, and the prince were all gone from the balcony. She could only hope that Dorothea had managed to do her task, because she'd certainly failed at her own, and with that she found herself looking at her human savior, watching as he focused on getting her to the water to rid himself of her. If he was allowed to go back, there would be the chance of war starting anyway, because he could tell about the invasion by the mermaids, but she wasn't sure what there was she could do about that.

It seemed that Felix's plan to get rid of her was to take her to the water and toss her in, but she managed to wrap her tail around him just enough that his tossing action caused him to follow her into the deep, as if she was attempting to drown him. Once she was back in the water she swam out to where it was deeper, removing the dress she'd been forced to wear and running her fingers through her lengthened hair, feeling much more at home than she ever had on land. She was so far from home, but she knew she'd be able to swim back safely under the shadows of night, and facing Edelgard to admit her failure would come after her return. At least, that was what she planned on.

What she didn't expect was feeling a hand grab her arm and pull her backwards when she started to swim away, and when she looked she saw a familiar face in an unfamiliar place. "What did you _do_ to me?" Felix asked, his face contorted in all sorts of anger as he spoke underwater like a natural. "What kind of mermaid nonsense is this?"

All at once Edelgard's plan made sense, and Bernie felt immense amounts of shame for completely screwing it up. Now that she was back in her element she was able to explain everything, and she did it while leading Felix back towards Adrestia, hoping that when she got there she'd easily find Edelgard, have her fix things, and they could return to their normal lives. There was no such luck, as with every bit of explanation Felix wanted to be able to go back and save his prince from his planned doom, trying to stop Bernie from leading him forward to where he could make a difference. It took them until midday to get to the underwater realm, the palace grand and visible from a distance, and by then they were both exhausted and ready to do anything but continue swimming.

Back on land, Dorothea had managed to find her voice, find a way to convince Prince Dimitri that going to the water's edge to listen to her sing would be the best way to enjoy her company (it may have involved seducing Sylvain to come along, but she was sure her dear Edie wouldn't mind some company), and had planned for when it would take place. Little did she know that by the time she'd get out to the shore, there would be no use in leading the prince into the water, as the spell that had been set to send him to a watery tomb, swimming aimlessly until he died, had already been used on someone else. All she ended up doing was giving him and his remaining retainer a performance of mermaid opera that they'd never forget, mostly because in singing the song she stepped into the water and transformed back to her original form, unable to return to the land she'd found men to amuse.

By the time she'd also made it back to Adrestia, the plans had completely unraveled, and Edelgard was forced to admit to her crimes to the man she'd wrongfully turned into a mermaid, as well as the girl who she'd tricked into helping her attempt to start a war. It was for the best that Bernie had failed her task, for the sake of almost everyone involved, and the one casualty was that a once-human was human no more, and Edelgard could do nothing to fix that because the magic used was magic Hubert had no way of reversing. The general public would never learn of their future emperor's misdeeds, and everyone would act like nothing had gone wrong.

Except, of course, the fact that Felix needed somewhere to live, and he singlehandedly blamed Bernie for his predicament—but her father seemed decently pleased at the kind of man she brought home with her, and overlooked her disappearance if it meant spending the rest of her days being a good wife to him.

* * *

"I highly doubt that things would happen like that," Felix remarked after reading the second of Bernadetta's dreams that she'd written down, although he was amused that she'd come up with something so fantastical. "And attempting to market this one to a general audience? Do you think anyone has quite forgiven the Adrestian Empire, or Edelgard, for what happened in the war?"

"I-I don't know," she admitted, taking her notebook back from him and closing it tightly, hugging it against her chest as she laid in the bed. "I just wrote down what I remembered dreaming, I can't help who it was about."

He paused, before conceding with a nod. "I suppose that would be true. All in all, it was an entertaining piece that you wrote down, even if it felt like there were ends you could have tied off better. What happened to the fish? Why couldn't she get the magic reversed? Did you decide that you only wanted to focus on, well, us, and that all of that could be overlooked in the end?"

"Why are you asking so many questions? I'm sorry my story wasn't good enough for you! You always knew that you were a failure, Bernie, why did you have to go and prove it again?" She looked to be on the verge of tears, and Felix had to comfort her and assure her that even with the oddities of it all, her mermaid fantasy was not the worst thing he'd ever had to read in his life.


	3. The Tower in the Woods

The wind blowing Bernie's short hair had completely tousled it to being nearly unrecognizable, but she wasn't one to complain about having a disguise handed to her for free. She yanked on the reins of the horse she was riding, attempting to steer it in a different direction in case they were still being followed, but she'd managed to escape the castle hours before—the chance that someone was still on her tail was slim to none. Her heart was racing as she looked behind her, putting faith in her horse to guide her in a safe direction, and when she saw no one visible she let her grip on the reins loosen just a bit. "Finally, I think we're going to be safe," she mumbled, turning back to face forward and steering the horse around a tree it nearly led them both into, screeching as she barely missed the branches overhead.

"I should've expected that, honestly," she said, noticing another tree coming at them with great speed, with bushes flanking it on all sides. Another bout of screaming later and she decided her best course of action would be to stop the horse and find a way around that wouldn't end in someone getting hurt; unfortunately, the fact that she was riding an unfamiliar horse in even more unfamiliar territory was her downfall, as trying to stop it resulted in it coming to a sudden stop, much too fast for her to react, and she was thrown off of its back and over the bushes, landing on her stomach as she slid into an obscured clearing.

Her eyes were instantly drawn to a tall, stone tower in the center of the clearing, completely foreign compared to the natural scenery around it. If there hadn't been so many trees along the way she certainly would've seen it upon approach, but as she picked herself up off the ground she felt compelled to take a look at it. She was running away from yet another royal family she'd managed to disappoint, she could make use of somewhere that was isolated in the wilderness, if just for a little while. Therefore, it was surprising and disappointing that she couldn't see a single entrance into the tower as she walked around its base, everywhere completely sealed and flush with the stones around it.

"Maybe I'm not looking high enough." Her realization came after a second round of the tower, but before she could turn her head to look further up a furry muzzle knocked against her face, and she was greeted with the goofy, almost eager eyes of the horse she'd stolen from the previous royal family she'd been staying with. "Oh, it's you again. At…least it's the horse and not one of the guards chasing poor Bernie down."

In response, the horse whinnied, hitting her again with its muzzle, and she laughed for a moment before finally looking upward. The tower was impossibly tall, given where it was located in the remote wilderness, and she was in awe of how it could have been built without making an obvious path to or from it, let alone an entrance to ascend to its top. She was in awe as she stood there, her mouth opening slightly as she attempted to explain her surprise, but when she thought to speak she noticed a slight ledge up near the very top, a wooden plank sticking out from the rocky wall. "Is that the roof?" she asked, moving around to see if she could get a better perspective. "N-no, it can't be, the roof's above it. Why's there a ledge all the way up there?"

Whinnying again, the horse nudged Bernie with its muzzle once more, and she stopped looking up only to hear the rustling of something in the woods around them. She nodded, understanding that the horse was trying to keep her safe, and she carefully climbed back on its back, riding away but promising herself that she'd return to the tower to see what mysteries it held and if it would be a safe place for her to hide for the rest of her life.

Up in the upper room of the tower, his elbows resting on the wooden ledge as he looked out on the forest around his place of captivity, a young man saw the girl on her horse riding away from the base of the tower and rolled his eyes. "How did someone find this place? Better yet, what do they expect to do here now that they know it exists?" He lifted his head and stepped away from the window, looking around the barren room that he called home, dark and barely furnished. "It can't be helped, no one's going to actually find me in here, and I'm going to live out the rest of my days being prisoner to my family's wishes because nothing will break any of these curses. Oh joy."

He walked towards the bed, covered in what looked like dark blankets to match the rest of the interior, but when he got close enough to it the supposed blankets moved away on their own, as did some of the dark coloring of the area around it. "First they offer me as a practice dummy to a witch to attempt to protect my brother, then he dies anyway and they have her curse me and lock me up to get me out of their sight forever. Some loving family they are." He brushed a few stray bangs out of his eye, trying to blend them into the hair around them, but they fell back long before he stopped running that hand down his hair, him getting as far as his shoulder before he grew bored with the act and climbed onto the bed.

Once again he looked out into the room, the light from the window shining on the darkness that covered so much of the area, reflecting off of bits and pieces of it to show that it wasn't paint, or rugs, or blankets, but rather the impossibly-long hair of the man on the bed, who wanted nothing more than to escape it and the captivity he found himself in.

The next day, Bernie was back at the base of the tower, climbing tools in hand and her feet standing on the back of the horse that she'd ridden in on. "You be a good friend and watch for anyone here trying to hurt Bernie," she told the horse, who seemed to nod in return. "Thanks, Raph, you're great! I wish I'd been able to save all your friends from that stable, but…" She trailed off as she looked at what she'd brought with her for the endeavor, goods that she'd managed to steal out of a shop in the village she'd spent the previous night in.

Even with standing on her horse's back, she was barely closer to that ledge on the tower than she was standing on the ground, but something about being with unstable footing made her feel like she was much closer than she actually was. There was no way in the world she'd be able to throw the rope with the rudimentary grappling hook all the way up to the ledge, not even in her wildest dreams, but she could at least give it a shot.

The hook barely made it above her head with her strongest throw, and fell to the ground without much fanfare; she looked at it disappointedly before turning her attention back up to the ledge itself. "I'm going to get up there and find the safety I've been searching for my whole life, just you wait," she told herself, moving on to the next set of items she'd gathered. In moments she had little suction cup-covered gloves on her hands and a hook on one foot, the other foot suction cupped as well. "You wait for me down here, Raph, I don't really think this will work but it's worth a shot."

Based on the timidity in her voice, she was clearly not lying about her thoughts, and the horse seemed to recognize that, staying exactly where he was even as she lifted herself up off of his back and started scaling the stone wall. This was more successful than the grappling hook had been, if only because she wasn't aiming to hit something impossibly high with a mere toss, but she was still struggling within minutes as she got higher up on the wall. It came to the point where she could feel her arms shaking wildly with exhaustion, and she couldn't move either leg without the fear that her arms would give in then and she'd fall helplessly to the ground, or at least onto the horse's back, inevitably harming herself in the whole process.

She tilted her head up towards the ledge, which seemed just as far as it had been when she was standing on Raph's back, and she heaved a long sigh, slowly lifting the foot with the blade on it to see if she could find another crack in the rocks to wedge it into. Her foot did make contact with a crack for a split second, before it slipped out of place and she lost her grip entirely, falling backwards without anything she could really do to stop herself.

That was, until she saw something long and dark falling from above her, and she was just barely able to grab it before she would've been harmed, the horse beneath her neighing as if he was worried about his rider's safety. "W-what is this?" she asked as she dug her tired fingers into the stringy mass that had effectively saved her life, managing to grab more of it between her legs as it continue falling past her. The only thing that she could think of was that it was hair, but that felt absurd to even consider, but the strands fit the role and she couldn't see it any other way.

Her absurd guess as to what had been her savior ended up being correct, which she found out after a long ride up the strands, where she was pulled up over the ledge and into a small, safe room at the top of the tower. There, standing over her, was a man who had to be about her age, holding onto his long hair just like she was. "How did you find this place?" he demanded, watching as she let go of the hair and raised her hands over her face. "This is no time to start acting shy, I need your answers. This should have been completely isolated, no visiting from anyone, not even my captor. Why are you here and how did you find me?"

"I-I was looking for somewhere to hide from an angry emperor and I ended up here," Bernie answered, her hands obscuring her face from the man as she was completely terrified that she'd been discovered by a real person. "I didn't mean any harm, I'll just…go if it means you'll forget I was ever here."

"That'd be lovely, but it's been weeks since I had human contact. Stay a while, I won't kick you out right away." The man shook his head in her direction before turning towards his bed, sitting on its edge and pulling his hair to collect at his feet. "Just don't do anything to damage my hair, will you?"

She dropped her hands long enough to see that he looked unamused, and she glanced at the quickly-growing pile at his feet before chirping a statement of agreement and covering her eyes once more. "I d-didn't realize it was hair when I grabbed it at first, I'm so sorry that I probably hurt you and it when I did that!"

"I threw it down to save you, you idiot. That's what it's for, saving people who fall from the tower." He stopped moving his hands, the pile of hair at his feet nearly touching it even as they hung off the edge of the bed. "Trust me, I know that it does that on its own, it's saved me a few times when I've tried…well, you probably don't need me spelling that out for you."

She chirped again, almost stepping backwards until she thought better of it and chose not to accidentally throw herself out of the tower room. "I'm so sorry that I chose to bother you," she apologized, once again moving her hands from her face to get a better look at the man and his impossibly long hair. "I didn't know anyone was here! I thought it would just be a good, safe place for me to hide for the rest of forever, and now I'm in your ha—in your way, aren't I?"

"That would be one way to put it, yes. But don't worry, your wish of hiding here forever will come true, depending on what your definition of 'forever' is." Resuming collecting his hair, the man leaned back once he had a complete pile of it, putting his arms behind his head as he relaxed. "If the witch who put me here comes back, you'll be dead, and if she doesn't, then you're stuck here with me until the end of time."

"The end of time?" Bernie repeated, both comforted and terrified at the idea. She was glad she might have found somewhere that she couldn't be found by who she was hiding from, but she also didn't exactly like the idea of dying so young. "I can't be stuck here forever, my horse down on the ground, he'll…he'll…"

"Die? I know, but we're not having a horse up here in my tower. I've been up here since my brother died, which was, well, a while back, and I've been fine without any creatures roaming around. It's just been me and this cursed hair, until you came along." He was still reclining on the bed, completely motionless minus his lips as he spoke. "It's not been the easiest going from retainer to the boar prince to a helpless captive, but that's the choice that was made for me."

Bernie stepped a tiny bit closer to the man, careful not to potentially step on any stray hairs that were laying around. "Did you say you were a retainer to a prince?" she asked him, to which he sighed and said that he had indeed just mentioned that. "Then you're not from anywhere around here, we don't have a prince or even a princess. Just the empress that currently wants poor little Bernie's head on her plate for going against her."

"Figures that the witch took me out of my home territory, but I know that I'd heard where _she_ came from wasn't ruled by a monarch or an emperor, so she must've hidden me somewhere that wasn't her own land. Easier to forget about me, I'm sure." He sounded incredibly spiteful as he spoke, and Bernie wished she could do something to help him, but all of her gestures seemed like they'd be useless in the situation. "Whatever, the boar's probably long forgotten I exist as well. Bet he's replaced me with another one of the countless soldiers around to do his bidding."

"I don't think someone could forget about someone so…memorable," Bernie said, looking at the man's giant pile of hair more than she was looking at him. "Your prince has got to remember who you are, and he's probably out there looking for you! Just like…just like the emperor and her henchmen are looking for me…"

"And why would anyone be searching far and wide for an innocent girl like you?"

"It…it's a long story, and I don't know if I want to get into it with you yet." Her mind jumping back to the horse waiting for her down on the ground, Bernie debated bringing it up with him again but chose not to, wanting to end the conversation sooner rather than later. "I think I just want to leave now, if that's okay. Let me leave the tower and then you can go back to being alone and I can go back to hiding."

He snorted, amusement filling his eyes as he looked at Bernie. "Wish I could let you do that, but I already said you're stuck here with me and that hasn't suddenly changed. Neither of us can leave this tower, if you jump you'll get caught by my hair so don't even think about trying it."

"That's…not really fair, is it?" All she'd wanted for so long, since she'd left her home and gotten wrapped up in her quest for finding peace for herself, was a place that she could live and be alone, and now that she had as close to that as she'd found she didn't want it. "Sorry, b-but you've got to let me leave! I can't be trapped here with you!"

"Oh, it's a problem with _me_ now, is it?" Suddenly sounding defensive and agitated, the man motioned towards his hair with a foot. "Come on then, why don't you end things for me? Wrap it around my neck, hang it like a noose, see what happens when you try." The whole conversation had escalated so fast that Bernie felt her head spinning, but the man's chuckle made her rethink how serious he was about asking her to do that. "If you think I haven't already tried it, you're wrong. There's no way out for either of us, since you tried joining me up here without considering consequences."

She wasn't sure how she was supposed to have known that there were such dire consequences for exploring the mysterious tower, and instead of argue further she shut down and ran to a spot against the wall, where she slumped down and buried her head under her arms. The last thing she wanted right then was to talk about things any further with the man, especially since he didn't seem to want anyone there with him, and she was going to do her best to isolate herself until she could come up with a plan to escape. Plans weren't her specialty, if they were she would've long since been somewhere safe and away from everyone who was searching for her to send her home, and she struggled to come up with anything that would work for the situation.  
What she did come up with, in the end, was trying to sneak out after dark. She still had her suction cups, although the blade she'd once had on her foot had disappeared somewhere in her fall off the side of the tower, and she decided that it would be worth a shot to try scaling the stone wall going down, and hopefully making it without needing the assistance of the seemingly magic hair the man possessed. In order to give it her best shot, she decided she'd wait until he'd fallen asleep that night, and then sneak out the window and hope for nothing but the best in her escape.

From the moment she could hear him softly snoring Bernie knew that she was dooming herself to a painful death, or a reminder that the man knew his situation better than she did and that she should've listened to him to start. The world outside the tower was dark, eerily quiet for being so close to the woods, and she could faintly hear Raph down on the ground making noises as he waited for his rider's return. "I'm coming for you, then we can get out of here and find our way somewhere else," she whispered into the night, her message intended for her horse, before she stuck one of her suction cups onto the wall and hoped for the best.

Just like when she'd tried climbing up, her arms grew tired quickly, and without all four contact points to the wall being used for holding herself up, she found herself getting into trouble without having moved very far at all from the ledge. But it was just too high for her to climb back onto on her own, and she was so far from the ground that trying to pray that she'd live if she fell was useless. There was no way she was going to get out of things safely, and rather than let her exhaustion take her out, she decided that pulling herself off the wall and controlling her own fall for those few short moments would be best.

Prying herself off the wall was easy, but knowing that she was falling to her death was much harder on Bernie, and she began to cry the moment gravity began carrying her. It felt freeing to let out her emotions as she fell faster and faster, but right when she'd accepted that her last moments were in such weakness she felt the hair wrapping itself around her, catching her without her needing to catch it herself, and her fall stopped at once. Except, unlike the previous time that day where the man's hair saved her life, it kept going down towards the ground with her wrapped in it, until it deposited her safely on the dirt and went back up into the tower.

Her eyes brimming with tears as she looked up at the full moon in the sky, Bernie wasn't sure what had just happened to save her life, but she knew she wanted to thank the man for it; the thought that she'd have that chance never crossed her mind until she saw him standing over her, his hair falling all around them both. "You tried leaving the tower anyway," he chided, bending down to offer her a hand, "and for that…thank you."

"I should be thanking you," she replied, taking his hand and pulling herself to her feet, Raph coming up behind her and baring his teeth at the strange man. "You said you couldn't leave and yet you're on the ground here with me. What happened?"

He seemed stunned at what she'd just asked him, his hand suddenly letting go of hers as he looked around at where he was. "I'm not sure, but I feel a chill in the air. The damned witch must be on her way back here to check on me. Might we get going?"

"On one condition." Bernie walked around her horse and climbed on his back, making sure there was room for the man to join her. "I-I want to know the name of the man who saved my life twice."

"Fair enough. My name is Felix, abandoned son of House Fraldarius, which I'm sure you've never heard of seeing as you were taken aback by my mention of a prince." He was correct, Bernie was not familiar with the name at all, but she wasn't going to claim he was lying just because she didn't know of somewhere. She welcomed him on the back of her horse and began their journey out, their movement slow because his impossibly long hair would catch on branches and require getting untangled. While they rode, they talked here and there, mostly about where they were trying to go and how they were going to get there, but on occasion Felix would talk more about where he'd come from, obviously trying to spur Bernie into doing the same.

She was just oblivious enough to his attempts to not fall for them, although she did take part in their conversation. "You talked about being a retainer to your prince before you were taken by the witch, right? H-how did you make that work?"

"This is about the hair, isn't it?" Bernie yelped and shrank slightly into her shoulders, but Felix didn't seem too bothered by the question. "My hair was not anywhere close to this length when I worked for the boar. It was part of the initial curse the witch put on me, to mark me as hers just in case she needed to find me again. Then when my brother died and I was given to her, she enchanted it to keep me in that tower, or so I thought."

"Oh, that actually makes sense," she replied, realizing how silly it would've been for someone protecting a royal to have such long hair that would cause nothing but problems. "I…I chopped all of my hair off when I left my father, to try and stay hidden from him. Not like it worked, the emperor knows who I am and she's looking for me."

"I thought you weren't going to tell me your backstory," Felix said with a chuckle. "Go on, Bernie, share what you're working with."  
She gulped and nodded, thinking about everything she'd been through in the time since she'd first left her father's household. In the following hour or so, she told Felix all about how her father had arranged for her to get married to another noble, who ended up being a rather nice man but not for her. They'd fled to go chase down some woman that her betrothed was more interested in, and when they'd gotten to her home territory her older brother had forced Bernie out because she wasn't welcome there. That had gotten her in all sorts of trouble as she tried to find somewhere else to live, getting her involved with a man who she'd stolen the horse from (at which point Raph whinnied, as if he understood what was being said), and when she came back to her homeland of Adrestia she was immediately accosted by a servant of the emperor who was looking for her, at her father's request. Then she'd gotten captured by a different servant, who had managed to get her and her horse into the emperor's palace before she'd managed to sneak out and escape further punishment, which had then led to her finding the tower in the woods the day before.

"And there's everything you need to know about Bernie," she finished, feeling oddly accomplished for having gotten through the entire story without stumbling or stuttering too terribly much. "So now we know each other pretty well, I guess."

"I'd disagree, but there's time for that to change. If you're looking for somewhere safe to hide, Faerghus might be the place to go, and seeing as that's where I need to return to get back to my normal life…we've got a while before we'll go our separate ways." Of course, Felix had no idea how far their destination was from where they currently were, and Bernie was at his mercy for directions, so their time together was going to be much longer than they were expecting. And by the time they made it to the snowy capital of Fhirdiad, so that Felix could rejoin his position with the prince, they'd decided that they'd been through enough along the way that separating then would be in bad taste.

After all, she'd gotten entrenched in his tale of magic and curses that she wanted to be there to see it through to the end, whenever that would be. They might not have been forced to live out the rest of their days together in an isolated tower, but living them out together was still on the table—the man with the cursed hair and the woman who saved him from captivity, together for the rest of their lives.

* * *

Bernadetta looked up from the page she was writing on, unsure of how in detail she should've gotten with some of the parts of the current dream she was retelling, to see Felix in heated discussion with a friend that Sylvain had managed to bring along to come see her. "I'm quite sorry, but other than rest and light action, I don't know what else can be done to help her heal," Mercedes said in her quiet voice, trying to stay level-headed even though Felix was clearly unhappy with the news she was delivering. "At any rate, she's at least not bleeding or showing any signs of that sort of injury."

"You mean to tell me that you can heal battle wounds in an instant, but you can't do anything for someone who hit their head on the ground? What kind of…no, it's not worth my time arguing with you about this. Thank you for your help, Mercedes, but apparently I was already handling it on my own." Felix took a deep breath before seeing that Bernadetta wasn't actively writing, and he went to her side to see what she'd done. In response, she closed her pen in her book and put it down on her lap. "Did you get your newest dream written? Please tell me it had nothing to do with cursing me in some way."

She grimaced, recalling very well what the dream had contained, and her face gave away the answer before she could even say it. "Oh, you're having Bernie write down the dreams she's been having due to the injury?" Mercedes asked, standing at the foot of the bed looking at the pair with a smile. "That's amazing! You should share them with me whenever they're all complete, I would love to read them."

"They'll need work before I share them with anyone else," she replied, her eyes on her notebook just thinking about how displeased she was with one aspect of the dream she'd just written. If she did go through and polish them, she would definitely need to work more on solidifying the backstories she gave her character and Felix's, to make them feel more sympathetic, but she couldn't help how the dream had gone. "Right now, I just want to be done with being bedridden, but I…don't think you'll let me do that, will you?"

At once, both Mercedes and Felix gave their answer, telling her that they wouldn't allow such a thing, and she knew that she'd gotten what she was expecting. Felix continued past the denial with, "You'll be staying in this bed as much as possible until we know your head isn't injured any further, and even then we'll be cautious. The last thing we need is to lose you over something so silly."

"Yes, of course! And if you're using this time to write stories, then you're still working on your hobbies even though you can't do much else!" Clasping her hands together, Mercedes seemed very excited to know that Bernadetta was writing out her dreams, and now that she knew, she wasn't going to let it go. "You'll have to keep me updated on the progress, I'm sure they'll all be great when they're finished!"

"They're already great as they are, Bernie is just being harder on herself than she needs to be. As long as she stops writing about me being cursed in various ways, I see no problem with these stories being shared without editing." Felix was doing his best to be supportive of his love, and it was working just enough to inspire Bernadetta to do a better job the next time she had one of her story-filled dreams, but she knew she wasn't going to be able to help it if he just happened to be the one being cursed yet again.

* * *

**A/N: I love Tangled and all, but the best retelling of Rapunzel involves Felix being the one with the long hair**


	4. Slumbering Boar

The castle belonging to the royal family of Faerghus had been under siege from enemy forces many times before, but time and time again they had managed to dispose of any threats and return to normal lives without facing many casualties. Some believed that the royal family was impervious to any actual deaths outside of natural causes, and some believed that they were immortal altogether, but the fact remained that every generation of the family looked similar to the previous one, down to the way the newest prince would run around the open courtyard with proud parents overlooking him.

It was idyllic and beautiful and couldn't last forever, not when the neighboring Adrestian Empire wanted to finally put a stop to the peacefulness and claim Faerghus as their own territory once more. In one fell swoop, they managed to get the heads of the king and queen on pikes and went after the young prince, but through intervention of outside forces the prince was nowhere to be found in the castle or in the surrounding city. Without him there to be placed on the throne, the Adrestian emperor was able to conquer the kingdom and its people, bringing it back into the fold of their lands, and that was expected to be the end of the whole ordeal.

But the prince was still very much alive, nestled away in a small cottage in the woods with only a man who'd given up his identity and family in order to protect the child. He was to be raised as the man's son to adulthood, then told of his true lineage and sent back into the capital city of Fhirdiad to try and gain the support of his former people, and hopefully restore Faerghus to its previous state with the monarchy rather than the oppressive empire. On paper the plan seemed plausible, but families who lives around the area who watched the boy grow up knew immediately that he was of royal blood, not of commoner status like his adoptive father tried to say he was.

When the prince was sixteen years old, he was allowed to leave the area directly around the home to learn more about his world, giving everyone the name of Averill Pronislav, son of Gilbert Pronislav, in case they grew suspicious of his looks and build. Anyone he met his age or younger believed his statement without hesitation, but anyone older being told that the regal-looking boy they were speaking to wasn't at least tangentially related to the former royal family looked at him with disbelief.

For two years he was able to walk freely among the people without knowing the truth of who he was, even if the majority of those he interacted with suspected it. On his eighteenth birthday, his father woke him with the news that he was not who he thought he was, and instead of truly being Averill Pronislav, he was Crown Prince Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd of Faerghus, presumed dead in his youth and raised in secret to bring glory back to his country in his adulthood. Dimitri, not sure of how he was to take such a mighty revelation, asked the man he'd seen as his father his whole life what he was expected to do now, and he was given the direction to gather forces he could trust with the information and retake the capital from the Empire, and that wherever he went he would not be alone.

He accepted this information and went to the towns and villages that he had frequented in the previous two years, approaching the friends he had made while he was Averill and hoping they would accept him as the prince to save their land. Most of them, having heard from their parents that the boy they'd befriended was not who he said he was, accepted the news without hesitation and devoted themselves to his cause. However, there were a few standouts who chose not to accept right away. One was a dark-haired man named Felix, who merely rolled his eyes and slammed the door on his friend when he came to recruit him; another was a fair-haired woman named Ingrid, who was so surprised to hear his claim to the former royal family that she told him not to lie to her before closing the door on him. In order to get them both on his side, he needed to bring someone else in, their other friend Sylvain who completed their trio of sorts, who could tell them that the man spoke the truth and that they needed to fight on the right side of history.

"I fail to see why we need to do anything with this boar…prince," Felix bluntly said, almost shutting the door on Sylvain as well, before he pushed his way inside and convinced his friend to join the cause with some sort of whispered promise that Dimitri was unable to hear. When the door opened back up, Sylvain looked pleased and Felix was grumbling under his breath, but he said that he would be there to assist in any way he could. Convincing Ingrid on the second attempt was as easy as showing her that Felix had been recruited, and she shook her head and said she'd come just to keep the two in line.

After going through and asking all of his friends he'd made in the two years if they would join his cause, Dimitri went back to the cottage in the woods where he'd been raised to visit his adoptive father one last time, but the man had disappeared, leaving nothing but an empty home to show for it. Confused, and heartbroken to not be able to get to say a proper farewell before setting off on his journey, he walked through the house and remembered all of the good times he'd had there in his youth, before gathering everyone who was journeying with him and setting out for Fhirdiad and the castle that his family had once called home.

The journey was not easy, especially once they began getting closer to the capital and away from the part of the country they grew up in. In the time since the Adrestian emperor had taken over, things everywhere had fallen into states of disarray, and the people were warned to be on the lookout for anyone who looked like they'd be causing trouble. Dimitri and his forces may have been small in number and did not seem to have anything in the way of weapons on them, but with him at the lead everyone who had lived under the rule of the former King Lambert knew that something seemed oddly familiar with the blond man and his group of friends.

When they reached the outskirts of Fhirdiad there was immediate trouble, the current emperor having gotten word of the appearance of someone who could have been Faerghus' missing prince, and she decided to take a look for herself. She had met the prince once in her youth, long before either of them would have been able to remember the encounter, but her father had not spared any details about the physical attributes of the prince's lineage before he'd been deposed by his daughter, her ready to lead the world into the future she desired. She rallied all of the troops she could muster to act as a guard and met the prince for the second time in the city streets with open arms, inviting him to spend time with her and have a peaceful discussion.

Unaware that she was the emperor, and was not simply someone that the emperor knew, Prince Dimitri accepted the invitation, but only if his friends were allowed to come with him. The smile that crept across the emperor's face as she realized she could take them all down in one fell swoop was just subtle enough that no one noticed its deviousness until they were following her into the castle she'd taken hold of, waiting for this moment. Her plan was to murder the prince indirectly, so that no one could blame her for what had happened even though she was the one responsible, and once he was gone for good she would not have to worry about anyone in Faerghus wanting to reclaim the throne.

Some of her closest allies were willing to assist her in the endeavor, going so far as to seat themselves between the prince and his friends at the grand dinner she provided for them, while others watched what was happening and had tinges of remorse course through their bodies. Was it appropriate for so many people to be involved in the murder of a man who hadn't directly claimed to them to be the prince? Behind the emperor's back, some of her allies began planning their own way to prevent tragedy from befalling the innocent people in the castle, hoping that she wouldn't notice they'd done anything until it was too late for her to stop them.

At the end of the meal, which she and her allies had not touched, she stood up at the head of the table and announced to them all that the meal had been tainted with a poison so potent that a simple taste could kill a horse in an hour. Immediately Dimitri and his friends all tried to cause a commotion, to try and bring attention to what she had done, but the poison was fast-acting and within minutes they were all slumped over the table, presumably dead and giving the emperor no challengers to her claim of ruling Faerghus as her own.

She and her entourage made no announcement to the people in Fhirdiad and instead headed back for their own capital in the dead of night, minus a single mage who had been behind the scenes the entire time, wringing his hands about what had happened. Once he knew it was safe to approach the presumed deceased, he came into the dining hall, the bodies as still as stone in their seats. "Please have worked," he begged, rushing to Dimitri's side and feeling his chilled skin, only to find a faint pulse beating in his throat. "Edelgard may have tried to murder you in cold blood, but we were able to save you from it. Now all we need is a miracle to happen, to bring the right people to rescue you once again…"

He checked everyone else to find that they were still alive, just in the deepest of slumbers, and he prayed to the goddess above that his plan would work to perfection. Over the coming years it became rumored that the supposed prince of Faerghus was kept in the castle, but no one would dare investigate things for themselves without running the risk of the emperor finding out and taking care of them personally. Some of her former allies in Enbarr, the capital of her sprawling empire, were holding on to the information that the rumors were true, waiting for the right collection of souls to come along that could wake the prince and his friends from their collective slumbers. The man who was the only witness to their survival had faith that the day would come sooner, rather than later, that the fated people would walk into his life.

The first person had always been there, and he was aware of it, but thrusting the information that her heart was pure enough to save one of the slumbering would undoubtedly be overwhelming for her. It took until a stranger rode into Enbarr, her hair tucked underneath a habit that she wore to protect her identity, that the man thought that he could take care of two at once, feeling the holy energy coming from the stranger. He was able to bring her into his study with ease, his friend and the first person he'd known of for the task already waiting there. "I've gathered you both here for a special reason," he said, watching his friend recoil at being spoken to while the stranger nodded, smiling as she did. "You see, I know who needs to be the ones noble enough to rescue the prince of Faerghus, thanks to the spell that was used to save him and his friends, and you two fit the bill perfectly. I would go along with you, but Edelgard would notice if I was gone too long, and she would grow suspicious if it was reported I was in Fhirdiad."

"Y-you want _us_ to go?" his friend asked, while the stranger nodded once again, seemingly having already known of this news. "I thought you said you wouldn't send a friend, which I assumed I was!"

"You are a friend, Bernie, and that's why I waited until someone else worthy of going was around to let you know of this." The man yawned, stifling it after a few moments with the back of his hand. "The two of you won't be going by yourselves, of course, but for now it's enough to start on your way."

"I'd been led to Enbarr knowing that I was coming for some divine reason," the other woman said, adjusting the front of her habit so that it looked more orderly. "I knew that staying behind when the prince and all of his friends went to take the castle was for the best for me, but I had no idea that I remained safe solely to save them in the future."

"I would not be surprised if there's another person or two out there who feels the same way, being led to this purpose by the goddess herself, but I don't know who they are or where you might find them. All I know is that when you see them…you'll know." He grabbed a book off of his desk and handed it to the other woman, while Bernie watched with her whole body trembling. "I believe this will be best in your possession, you'll know what to do with it when the time comes."

It was not safe for them to meet any longer, and Bernie was fine with that decision, but when she tried to leave on her own she was told that she had to go with the new woman instead of wherever she was planning on retiring to. They were warned that it would be dangerous for them to stay around Enbarr for more than the night, because the emperor would be onto them the moment they started to make moves, and so they needed to plan out what they were going to do from there. She wasn't thrilled about that, but the woman took her by the hand and assured her everything would work out for the best for them, as long as she believed in herself.

Over the course of the night, Bernie learned that the woman's name was Mercedes, and that she had been biding her time in the countryside of Faerghus until the goddess gave her direction for where she needed to go to be useful. She handled finding them somewhere to stay for the evening, choosing a run-down inn that seemed surprised to have a woman of faith walking in through the door, but they were able to get a room that they felt safe enough inside. "I've heard of someone else who's been spoken to so closely by the goddess on this matter, and that's where we'll head first. Pray tell, Bernie, have you heard of Garreg Mach Monastery?"

"Who hasn't? It's right in the middle of Fódlan, but…hasn't it been abandoned and ransacked by the Empire?" Bernie could almost guess where Mercedes was going with this idea—they were going to search for someone in the abandoned monastery, which was going to be dangerous and unprotected and risky for them both. "You d-don't want us to really go there, do you?"

"We have no choice, I'm afraid. We have to go there to meet with the other person the goddess has chosen for this task, and from there we can save the prince." Mercedes looked at the book she'd been given, noticing how innocent the cover looked and how anyone who saw her with it would assume she was just practicing magic. She flipped the cover open to reveal a note from the man who'd given it to her, explaining the spell he'd used to save everyone's lives and the counter-spell for it, and once she'd read the note she closed the book and tucked it into her bag with her holy texts. "I can only guess why this requires more than one person to do the job, but we'll get the answers for that after we've arrived in Fhirdiad. For now, let us sleep, Bernie."

Mercedes seemed wholly devoted to the task that had been thrust upon her, and she fell asleep almost immediately after tucking herself in under the blankets of the bed. Bernie wasn't quite as quick to find slumber, but after assuring herself that she was in the presence of the best person she could be with, she too managed to fall asleep. Their sleep was restful despite being cut short by the sound of soldiers outside the door, rustling around in heavy armor and talking loudly about doing checks on suspicious individuals. Bernie was scared for her life in that moment, but Mercedes took control of the situation and ushered her out towards the window, making use of her habit as a makeshift rope to get them safely down to the ground before the soldiers could check the room and find their plans.

Running from Enbarr, and from specifically the life that Bernie had been leading for so long that she hated, would have been much more peaceful if it wasn't done knowing that imperial soldiers wanted to see them killed for their mission. Finding places to eat, let alone sleep, were going to be challenges until they got to Garreg Mach, but the duo couldn't turn back and let themselves be caught when they'd already gotten closer to saving an incapacitated prince than anyone had before. Their journey took days, and when they finally made it to the former monastery they were both on their last legs in terms of strength, but to their surprise there was a small town, a small culture, there at the monastery ready to bring them back to good health.

It was while they were recuperating from their trip that Mercedes first noticed a woman with light hair searching around, her expression blank but her eyes focused on finding something. "I don't know why, but that woman's hair reminds me of images of the goddess," she remarked, her voice still weak even though she'd been recovering for several days at that point. "Perhaps she would be a good place to start our search for the other people we need, once we're up for it."

"I don't know, what if she's with the empire and she passes the message that we're here along to those soldiers?" Bernie shuddered at the thought of dying now, after having gotten halfway to their ultimate destination of Fhirdiad. "W-we could be sent back and Edelgard could have us executed for our crimes!"

"It's okay to be nervous about this, Bernie, but I'm confident that she's someone we could find use in. Your friend there in Enbarr, his book notes the four kinds of people needed to reverse the spell. Pure of heart, pure of faith, pure of emotion, and pure of strength. I…can't say for certain which one that woman will lead us to, but I believe that she will take us right where we need to go." Giving a small sigh, Mercedes looked at Bernie with a gentle smile before adding, "And if I'm wrong, then you can certainly blame me for our demise."

The way she spoke showed off the confidence she was feeling, and Bernie tried her best to go along with it over the following couple of days, until they were back to their normal selves and able to leave where they'd been staying without feeling fatigued. Their first order of business was to ask the people in the small town what they knew about the woman with the teal-ish hair, yet not a soul seemed to know who they were speaking of. She certainly hadn't been an illusion, they knew what they had seen, but no one else had a clue about what was going on. If it had been anyone else leading the search, there might have been frustration, but Mercedes put her faith in the goddess to give them direction so that they could continue on and liberate the Faerghus she'd grown up in.

It happened quickly, much like going on the journey in the first place had, when the next morning they were greeted with a feisty-looking orange-haired woman who looked ready to grapple with them both. "The name's Leonie, no worries if you forget it," she said, noticing that Bernie looked intimidated and Mercedes was trying to read her intentions. "I was sent here by my traveling companion, she said to get you and go, so…we're doin' just that. My horse is outside, just come meet me there and I'll get you over to her."

"Pure of strength…" Mercedes whispered, making sure that the tome with the reversal spell was still in her possession. "We'll be right there, Leonie. Thank you for coming to do this for us, I'm sure the goddess has some divine reason for this meeting."

Leonie gave a small wink in Mercedes' direction, before turning to Bernie, opening her mouth to say something, and thinking better of it, heading outside instead. "I don't think she likes me very much," Bernie lamented, as she grabbed her scarce belongings and got ready to follow Mercedes and the new stranger into whatever trap they were inevitably headed for. "I don't know why, but when she looked at me I think—"

"You're simply trying to see the worst in things. I believe that she recognized you as being someone important to her journey, just like I recognized her as being important to ours. Now let's move along, we can't leave Leonie and her friend waiting too long." Mercedes seemed to be motivated in her actions by some outside force, which Bernie couldn't quite understand, but when they found Leonie and her horse they were helped onto its back while its usual rider walked alongside it, keeping in stride with the horse's pace as long as they were moving and talking to the ladies to get to know them better in case they were to spend more time together. They didn't go far from the little town outside the monastery, but they seemed to have been taken to an old guard shack of sorts, which looked like it hadn't been fixed in the years since the monastery had fallen into disrepair.

As they got off the horse Leonie let out a loud whistle, and from inside the shack came a holler that someone would be right there, followed almost immediately by the teal head of hair that Mercedes had been so insistent on finding. "You came," the woman said, looking past Leonie at the new pair. "I was right, we would find fellow spirits here."

"You sure were right, they even fit the bill for what we've been looking for!" Leonie clasped her hands together before working to introduce everyone. "Byleth, these are Mercedes and Bernie, they came from Enbarr in search of people to save the monarchy of Faerghus with. And Mercedes and Bernie, this is Byleth, she's going to help you…help _us_, save the monarchy of Faerghus!"

"Pure of heart and pure of faith, just like the voice said." Byleth still showed no emotion, not even a smile as she looked at the two, but she didn't hesitate on accepting them in the roles they were presented as. "Now we need to get into the castle and awaken the slumbering, but I don't have the spell, nor the ability to use it successfully."

"That would be why I'm here, I assume," Mercedes said as she pulled out the tome she'd done an amazing job of protecting, opening it to show off the reversal spell written in its pages. "Back in Enbarr, before we were chased out, we were given this for that very reason. I assume I'm going to have to cast it while you all…do something? I'm admittedly not certain what that something may be, but we have time before we face that problem."

The time they had was relatively short, though, as Byleth had arranged for them to have an escort into Faerghus, on a trading convoy that seemed to have no issue with four vastly different women tagging along with them. They were able to get into the region without issue, minus the lingering dread that they didn't know what they were supposed to do once they did their siege on the castle and found whoever was still inside of it, and the convoy leader offered to take them straight to Fhirdiad but Byleth refused the offer. "We need to go one other place before we head to the capital, thank you though."

"What does she mean, we need to go 'one other place'?" Bernie whispered to Mercedes, who looked to be just as confused, and turning their attention to Leonie to see how she was reacting gave them no answers because she was also unsure of what Byleth was planning. But asking Byleth herself wasn't possible, and so they were left up to her mercy as she directed them away from the capital and out into the countryside. As they traveled, Bernie and Leonie both were left looking for clues as to where they were going, but Mercedes began recognizing sights here and there, to the point that when they approached a small village she knew exactly where they were.

"Are we looking for the prince's former home?" she brought up with Byleth after entering the village, which was small and nearly abandoned. Byleth nodded firmly, and Mercedes grimaced at what that meant. "I wish I could say we will find it here, but…it was burned years back, when the forest caught fire during a storm. Nothing was left of the home that he and his supposed father called home, as if it was intentionally destroyed."

"That's what I had heard when I first looked into how to save the prince. I believe it is incorrect, though, and I want to check for myself. Will you show me where the home existed?" When Byleth spoke, she spoke with a confidence that would have been masked if she showed emotions, but because she was completely flat it was hard to ignore how sure she sounded of herself. Mercedes agreed to take her to the location, and so the four of them went into the burned-out woods, shells of trees and small plants surrounding them as they walked.

The spot that had once held a house was completely bare, no sign of even a foundation for a building having existed there. Byleth bent down to touch the dirt, her fingers picking up the dark soil as well as ashes, and she sighed. "I don't think you're finding it here," Leonie remarked, watching the path they'd come down just in case anyone chose to follow them. "I know you're so sure you're going to find something here but—"

"I wasn't sure I would find anything, Leonie. I wanted to know where the man who raised the prince went, but there isn't a clue here as to where that is." Standing back up and brushing her fingers on her leg, Byleth turned and began heading back towards the village. "I wanted to be able to tell him personally that we saved his son, but it isn't possible and that's…fine. If something had happened to me, and my father were alive, I would have wanted him to know when I was saved."

"—yeah, I should've known this was what it was about." Leonie waited until Byleth was several steps ahead before she followed, with Mercedes and Bernie right behind. As they all walked, she explained to the other two what had happened, about how the emperor had pulled the strings to cause Byleth to lose her father (who had happened to be Leonie's idol) and about how that loss had brought them together to put a stop to the nonsense by saving the prince. "Byleth's got this huge personal stake in the whole thing, I bet she's going to make sure we bring the prince back without any issues just to get revenge for her father. And…I'm helping too, for that same reason. For her father."

Whereas the two who had been recruited for the cause in Enbarr didn't have extreme personal stake in the matter (or at least Bernie didn't, Mercedes at least knew the prince), the two they'd met outside Garreg Mach clearly had a vendetta against the empire that they needed cleared up. That was their great motivation for sneaking into Fhirdiad in the dead of night, when the guards weren't able to clearly see them sneak in under the cold, dark sky, moon obscured by clouds and not a light shining in sight. They moved entirely by foot, Leonie's horse having been left in the village to be raised by a farm family, and once they were on city streets it was up to them guessing where the castle was that they needed to get into to stage their dramatic rescue.

But as they climbed the steps to get to the front door, Mercedes with the magic tome in hand ready to sling spells as needed, Byleth with a sword drawn and Leonie with a lance, and Bernie trying to keep up without letting her fear take over, they heard the sound of armored footsteps coming behind them. The first arrow that flew overhead struck the wooden door of the castle, causing the four to turn around to see Fhirdiad besieged with imperial soldiers, all of which had been on their trail and waiting for them to make their move. "Get inside however you can, I was prepared for this," Mercedes hissed at the others, dropping all notions of kindness as she traded the tome she was holding for a much rattier one. "If you thought our time in the village was a total waste, you are gravely mistaken."

"We'll meet you inside then!" Leonie called, Bernie nodding along, but Byleth had already charged to the door, slashing its rotted wood open with a few swings of her sword. They were able to get inside before they heard too much commotion, but turning back was no longer an option and their entire plan relied on Mercedes surviving whatever she had in store for the soldiers.

The castle was musty and showed its years of neglect, dust and cobwebs covering every surface. Byleth had pulled a makeshift lantern out of her bag of belongings and had lit it, allowing them to light their path as they walked; the sound of critters scurrying around everywhere was jarring, given that they were in a castle, but it was one that they soon grew used to as they made their way into the bowels of the building. Their destination was unknown, but they knew they'd find it somehow, although finding it without Mercedes would be problematic at best.

It was in the grand dining hall where they found candles lit on the table, the eerily still bodies of those who'd been sentenced to a deep slumber covered in dancing shadows cast by the flame. "Someone's in here," Byleth stated, looking around to find whoever had set the candles up for them. "Show yourself. We are not here to play!"

"I told you I was prepared for an ambush," Mercedes cheerfully replied, stepping out from the shadows to show that she was fully intact, the tome they needed still in her hands. "I'd arranged for some of my friends who weren't part of this ill-fated adventure to be lying in wait here for whenever we came to save the prince. Of course, telling them this was for Dimitri wasn't going to work, they didn't care so much for Dimitri."

"How did you convince people to help you, then?" Bernie asked, confused. "If I were one of them, I…probably would've just stayed home."

Mercedes waved one hand, while the other held the tome tightly. "That's easy. I told them they were doing it for their friend Averill Pronislav, who just _happened_ to be the prince of Faerghus we need. Now we need to hurry, I'm afraid there's not much time before the soldiers break through the barrier we created out there."

From there, Mercedes walked everyone through what they needed to do in order to reverse the sleeping spell that had been cast over the people in the dining hall. It required her to cast some magic, but that was not enough to get them to wake—the crucial step was to give everyone a kiss of life. That concept did not go over well with any of them, for their own reasons, but they had to go through with it or else everything was a complete waste and Faerghus was lost to the empire for the rest of eternity. They each selected someone to bring back, and then after Mercedes gave the vocal component of the reversal, they carefully positioned the sleeping person in such a way to access their lips, and then gently kissed them.

It was not an instant revival in all instances. The one Bernie had selected woke up almost immediately and tried to put her in a chokehold, until he realized his surroundings were much different than he'd last remembered seeing them. Mercedes' choice woke up after a few seconds, stunned that a lovely woman was kissing her, but she was quickly trying to get to her feet to fight whoever'd incapacitated her. Leonie had to smack the one she'd chosen, because he'd gotten a bit greedy once he'd realized he was kissing someone and wanted to get as much out of it as he could.

And then Byleth, having chosen to wake the prince herself, was stuck having to kiss him over and over until he finally woke up, the spell on him much stronger than the others. All of them seemed thankful to have been saved, not having known they weren't dead until they were back in the land of the living, and after quickly catching them up to speed on what was happening outside the castle they all decided it would be best to charge out and begin fighting for the fate of Faerghus. All of them except Bernie, anyway, who had fulfilled her role as the one pure of heart and had woken the one with the coldest soul, and just wanted to go home and forget she'd ever gone on the journey.

The night was filled with fire and fighting, but when morning came the people in Fhirdiad were greeted with their reawakened prince, who was ready to take over the throne he'd been kept alive for. Knocking back the imperial troops went on for much longer than the single night, though, but what was known as the Battle of Fhirdiad was the first step towards their inevitable victory, and after the war was over and Faerghus was its own kingdom once more, Crown Prince Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd was able to take the title of King, just like his father before him once had, and once again the people were able to look to their leader and his castle, wondering if he too would follow in the footsteps of the generations before him in terms of seeming immortal.

* * *

"As impressive as it is that you barely included me this time," Felix said upon reading the conclusion of Bernadetta's latest dream story, "was it really necessary to have me be the one you revived in the end?"

"I guess it probably was," she replied, taking back her notebook and rereading the ending of the tale. "It wasn't like it was my choice or anything, you know? I-I probably could've changed it if I had a say in the matter!"

He stared at her, unblinking, for just a moment before assuring her that it was fine in how she presented things. "Besides, if we choose to show these off to others in this form, I'm sure the boar will find it amusing that you wrote him in such an important role. Not only that, but you gave him back his kingdom without the mental breakdown or losing an eye."

"Oh, he might've been missing an eye, I may have forgotten that detail…" Flipping back pages to check to see where she could have possibly added that in, she heard Felix sigh and she stopped her search entirely. "W-what, do I not need to include that? Is he going to get upset if I leave that out?"

"It'll be fine, I already told you that. You let the woman he loves kiss him awake, I don't think he'll complain if he didn't lose an eye in everything."

* * *

**A/N: I really liked writing this one, it was a lot of fun having to get creative with the retell c:**


	5. Cinder Bernie

The knock at her door was enough to get Bernie to scream in terror, not knowing who it was that was there to bother her. She'd been out of her father's care for a while and hadn't needed to worry that whoever was at her door had ill intentions with her, but she couldn't shake the habits that living in such an unsafe environment had instilled within her mind. "I'm b-busy," she managed to call out, looking for something she could pull out to make it look like she was telling the truth. "Go away, I'm not interested."

Rather than listen to what she said, the door opened anyway and in stepped two well-dressed individuals, both of which had long hair hanging over their shoulders. "Come now, Bern, this is no time for making excuses to us," the woman who'd entered said, lacing her fingers together and bringing them up underneath her chin. "Ferdie and I are just here to ask a small favor of you."

"That is correct, we do have quite the favor to ask, but…are you trying to make it look like you've been in here studying?" Noticing that there were books scattered all over Bernie's bed, Ferdinand shook his head and looked at his companion, who was more focused on Bernie herself than anything else. "Dorothea, perhaps this is an idea not worth pursuing. I can already tell she is not going to want to attend this event with us, we may need to think up a backup plan just in case."

"Nonsense, Ferdie! She will come along, she knows what happens if she chooses not to do things with us." Dorothea's lips formed a smile that Bernie saw out of the corner of her eye and felt immediate terror from. She did know that if she said she wasn't going to participate in something they asked her to do, she would have to do their chores instead, but she didn't mind having to do the extra work if the alternative was any sort of social plan, as it usually was. "We here have been invited to a ball being hosted by the king and queen of Faerghus, and it would be rude to turn down such a noble invitation. You must attend alongside us, Bern, it's the only option."

"But I really don't want to," she protested under her breath, trying to distract herself in one of her books rather than pay any attention to her unwanted visitors. That became impossible almost right away, when Dorothea sashayed over to her and plucked the book she was using out of her line of sight. "H-hey, you can't touch my stuff! I'm not going to this ball, I wasn't even the one invited. You two were."

Tutting as she shook her head, Dorothea closed the book and set it back down on Bernie's desk, before cupping her chin with her hand and turning her head so that they could see each other face to face. "That is incorrect, my dear. Ferdie and I were invited, certainly, but an invitation for one Bernadetta von Varley came in the mail as well, properly spelled and everything! This event was meant for you, Bern, and you are going to be going to it with us, no ifs, ands, or buts."

"But—"

"I said none of that! Ferdie, please talk some sense here into our friend, you do always know how to get through to her better than I do." Dorothea's hand didn't move from under Bernie's chin, keeping her held stiffly in place, but she did step aside so that Ferdinand could slip into view, looking unsure of what was being expected of him. "Go on, you read the invitation more times than I did, you know what it said."

"That is correct, I did read it more. The emphasis the person who wrote it put on my name was hard to ignore, their pen really was meant for writing the Aegir name so beautifully." He paused, coughed to clear his throat, and then proceeded to elaborate on what attending this ball meant, with Bernie forced to listen and unable to escape the snootiness that was filling her room in that moment. "We have been invited to a ball hosted by the royal family of Faerghus, as a gesture of good will and an attempt to mend bridges that were burned during the war. The goal is to become acquainted with the royal family and their associates, so that we can feel like the kingdom is a place we are safe. It's…slightly bizarre to consider entering former enemy territory so unexpectedly, but making social bonds is something that I, Ferdinand von Aegir, should tackle with full force and ferocity."

"Plus, if we get in well with the royal family, perhaps we will be able to move on from this wartime hostel we call home and find our way into nicer living spaces. Can't you imagine it, us all having our own place to live rather than having to share this one?" Dorothea finally let go of Bernie's head as she twirled around on her toes, sharing her exuberance at the concept of finding somewhere new to live. "I certainly hope I get the chance to sing while we're there, it's been ages since I last performed!"

"I really don't want to go," Bernie finally said, the importance of this ball and going to it completely lost on her. She wasn't a social person by any means, going to a ball that was being held to promote social activity would be much like putting a fish on dry land and expecting it to succeed. "I'll just be a wet blanket on all of you. It's best if Bernie stays home, right where she belongs."

Her twirling ceasing almost instantly, Dorothea bent down to get on Bernie's seated level, her eyes wide in horror. "That isn't an option, Bern! If you don't attend, then the king and queen might see it as a form of disrespect, and then there go our chances at making it big in Faerghus! Even if you're going to be a wet blanket, you're going to be a wet blanket sitting at the ball, and that's final!"

"If anything, you attending and not enjoying yourself will show your dedication to leaving your comfort zone. More importantly…" Ferdinand flipped part of his hair back over his shoulder, giving a soft _hmph_ as he did. "You going and looking like a disaster will do wonders at making Dorothea and myself that much better."

"Which reminds me, we need to start getting ready now, so we'll be off. Going isn't a choice, Bern, you're attending and that's that. Talk to you later!" Just as quickly as they'd entered, the pair was gone, and Bernie was left slumping over her desk trying to hold back tears at how uncomfortable the whole idea of going to this ball that she wanted no part of was making her. She wasn't able to stand up for herself, and now the people she lived with simply because it was them or nowhere at all had forced her into a situation that she was going to not find any enjoyment in.

A rush of air filled the room, yet Bernie was too distracted with her own emotional distress to bother looking for the source. It took a small voice chirping, "Hello? Bernadetta? Am I in the right place?" for her to lift her head to see a small, orange-colored bird sitting on her desk, beady eyes focused on her with a wing held up above them. "Oh! You definitely fit the bill! Are you Bernadetta?"

"Bernie, yes," she replied, rubbing at her eyes to make sure that she wasn't hallucinating and that there really was a talking bird there in her room. "Who, or _what_, are you, and what do you want with me?"

"I'm your fairy…wait, hold on, I'm in the wrong form!" The bird seemed to laugh before disappearing in a puff of smoke, being replaced with a small girl who barely stood as high as Bernie's forearm, with orange hair and robes. "There, that's better! I'm your fairy godsister, and I'm here to help you!"

Tilting her head slightly to the side, Bernie repeated, "Fairy…godsister? Since when do I have one of those?"

"Since I got assigned to you, that's when! My name's Annette, and I'm going to make sure that you attending the ball in Faerghus goes off without a hitch!" Clasping her tiny hands together, Annette seemed to beam with every word she spoke. "I know, it's probably a lot to take in, having someone so small talking to you and telling you that they're a fairy and they're going to help you, but you've got to trust me on this! I didn't spend years learning magic to let beautiful girls attend balls looking like they just walked out of the swamp!"

"I happen to like looking like I came from the swamp." Bernie did believe that this girl was a fairy—it didn't make sense otherwise—but she didn't believe that she could be helped into having any sort of good time at the ball. "You should go help Dorothea or maybe even Ferdinand, they want to look nice when they go to the ball. Whoever sent you must've had the wrong name."

Annette's hands separated and went straight to her hips, as she leaned forward and tried to look as fierce as a girl her size could. "I can tell you with absolute certainty that you're the one that I was sent to help! You have a super-special mission when you go to this ball, and I'm the one who's going to help you achieve it!"

"Please don't say you're going to…make me talk to people while I'm there!" The way Annette seemed to hold in a giggle at the suggestion seemed to prove Bernie's greatest fear, and she cried, "Oh no, Bernie's so bad at social interaction, she's going to make a fool out of herself and ruin everything for everyone!"

"Hey now, that's not going to happen and you know it! The person you've got to talk to hates talking to others just as much as you do, that's why you've got to talk to him while you're there! I know that you, and you alone, can break through his prickly exterior, and when you do…" Her voice dropped low, barely audible to Bernie. "You have to tell him his songbird misses singing for him, he'll get the message."

Bernie's eyes went wide and she threw her head back, letting out a long wail. "I can't play messenger with a stranger at a royal ball! Someone'll see me trying to talk and they'll think they can talk and I'm not prepared for this! Just let someone else do this, please!"

"No can do, Bernie! Now stand up, we've got a dress to get on you and not a lot of time to do it! My magic might be, well, magical, but it's not instant when I'm creating something from scratch! Up on those feet, let's go!" For being so small Annette certainly had a lot of energy, and even after several more minutes of back-and-forth refusals she was just as chipper as she had been when she started, and Bernie found that she wasn't going to be able to say no to the little fairy forever.

Slowly she got out of her chair, mentally protesting every second, but she did do as she was asked and ended up standing in the middle of her room, while Annette remained on the desk, looking Bernie from head to toe. "W-what are you planning on doing to me?" she fearfully asked, expecting to be told that she was going to go through some insane physical changes in a matter of moments. "I can't let you hurt me, or make me break anything in this room, otherwise there'll be problems!"

"Shush, I'm not going to do anything except beautify you!" Sitting down so that her little legs dangled over the edge of the desk, Annette pulled a book out from underneath her robes and opened it up, flipping through the pages and humming to herself. "Let's see…how do you feel about shorter hair, Bernie? I think it'd suit you much better than whatever it is you've got going on right now! And dresses, I think a long skirt is better than short, it'll do a lot to help you hide yourself, and I'll make sure it has sleeves and covers you up nice and well!"

Bernie wasn't sure how she was supposed to answer any of that, but she was beginning to suspect that something was amiss. "You can't _really_ do any of that stuff, can you? You're just playing a huge trick on me right now, probably sent here by my father of all people!"

"What? No! I'm really your fairy godsister, and I'm really going to make you look like you were born to attend the royal ball! You've just got to believe in me!" Closing the book and setting it aside, Annette held out a hand and let it begin taking on a silvery glow, an orb of magical power forming inside her palm. "I'll make those people you live with jealous of your looks and true beauty, just you wait and see!"

"I don't want to see it," Bernie whined, closing her eyes tightly. She could feel things brushing against her neck at first, moving on to covering the rest of her body, like a million tiny feet leaving footprints all over, but she kept her eyes closed the whole time. The fear was that if she opened them, she would be left to face the reality that this little creature had just ruined her life and left a mess for her to explain, and she couldn't grapple with that reality right then.

After some amount of time, Annette loudly exclaimed, "Open those eyes, Bernie! Look at yourself and the radiant beauty that could only be released by someone as caring as your fairy godsister!"

She initially resisted, but the fear that someone else had heard the voice that definitely should not have been inside the house and was coming to investigate made her eyes shoot open. The first thing she noticed was that her eyes weren't being hit by her bangs any longer, although she could feel them touching her forehead, and when she went to feel the damage she noticed that her hands were both covered in long, lacy black gloves that went up past her elbows. Shrieking in surprise, Bernie knocked herself off-balance and fell backwards onto her bed, her legs kicking up and bringing with them the long dress that she was now wearing. She'd heard the crinkling of the crinoline as she fell back, and underneath the deep red fabric she could see layer upon layer of thick petticoats. "What did you do to me?" she breathlessly asked, while the fairy looked stunned as she watched the display.

"I just gave you what I thought you'd look best in," Annette replied, bringing a finger to her chin as she watched Bernie struggle to get back up, "but I'm realizing that maybe what I think you'd look best in isn't what's best for you. Let me give it another shot, please!"

"Anything to get me out of this disaster waiting to happen."

The second outfit came with just as long of a wait, but when Bernie saw it she was less shocked. The gloves were gone, replaced with simple bangles that wrapped around her wrists firmly, no clanging to be heard. Her feet, which before had been forced into tall heeled shoes that she was not expecting, were much more comfortable in simple slip-on dance shoes, and while they were hidden by the long hem of the pale purple dress, there was no crinoline or hoopskirts to be seen. Annette could tell things had gone over better the second time, but yet she still questioned, "Is this one more to your liking?"

"Much better, thank you." Bernie had found the mirror in her room and actually looked at her reflection to see that she was in something that she could reasonably leave the house in. The top of the dress pinned at her neck with a simple flower on the collar, and the sleeves covered her shoulders and billowed out down to her elbows, and she was impressed at the hairstyle that she'd been given, her long hair strands chopped away and the short hair that was left clipped up in several places with matching flowers to the collar. "It's still going to give me a…lot of attention, don't you think?"

"No, the first dress would've done that! This one might get a couple eyes on you, but nothing too intense. I just hope that…_they'll_ see you in this one." Annette stood up once again, making sure that she had all of her belongings intact before disappearing into smoke, replaced with the bird that had initially entered the room. "There's one catch to this transformation, but I think you'll be plenty fine with handling it. After all, you're not exactly the kind of girl to kiss upon first meeting, are you?"

Bernie's heart felt like it stopped at the idea of kissing someone she'd barely met. "No way! Is…is the person you're having me meet that sort of person?"

"Of course he isn't! You've just got to make sure that you don't kiss him, not tonight and not ever, or else you'll be back to your old self and not the new version. It's a limitation of the magic, you see." Taking flight, Annette flew towards the window of the room before landing on the sill, giving Bernie and her handiwork one last glance before pushing her way back through the broken pane of glass she'd used to enter.

Now that Bernie had been forced into dressing up, she considered heading out to where she knew Dorothea and Ferdinand would be getting ready, but she stopped herself when she remembered she still did not want to go. Being magically transformed was a plus, but she'd been fine the way she was before and she hadn't needed any sort of assistance. If she suddenly was eager to attend the ball, the people she lived with would know that something was up and they'd badger her for information for the whole time it took them to get to the ball. So instead of being proactive and waiting elsewhere, she stood there at her mirror and stared at her reflection, in awe of what Annette had done to her in such a short amount of time with no reason for it other than to get her to go meet some guy.

Eventually Dorothea came to the door, banging her hand on the wood to get Bernie's attention. "You're going to make us late if you don't throw something on right now and get out here!" she yelled, banging several times. "Ferdie worked hard to get his hair braided for the occasion on his own, the least you can do for him is make sure the king and queen of Faerghus get to see his dedication to looking beautiful!"

"I'm coming, I'm coming," she replied, taking a deep breath before opening the door and seeing Dorothea standing on the other side in a long, body-hugging dress made from some thick, almost visibly textured fabric. It was clearly an older dress, from Dorothea's opera singing days, and although she looked comfortable in it, it wasn't anywhere near as extravagant as the one Bernie herself was wearing. "Sorry, I must've gotten distracted. I'm ready to go whenever."

"Where in Fódlan did you get that?" Dorothea asked, gasping as Bernie walked past her with a shrug. "All this time you've been holding onto something so lovely, Bern? I'm impressed, I would have guessed you would have long since given that away."

"She's right, I never would expect you to willingly wear that," Ferdinand agreed, fiddling with the end of the braid that he'd created in his hair. He was looking rather plain, although he was definitely dressed better than usual, and it was after seeing him that Bernie understood that Annette had needed her to outshine her companions at the ball, so that whoever she was expected to talk to would notice her rather than them. For the whole ride to the castle Dorothea tried to get information about where the dress had come from out of Bernie, while Ferdinand talked almost exclusively about how he was going to impress the other attendees with his charm, wit, and name. Bernie merely held her head in her hands and prayed to the goddess that everything would work out, and that she would leave the ball with less on her plate than she had in attending it.

They arrived at about the same time that many other guests had, but trying to play it cool they waited until everyone else was inside before making their entrance, the other two expecting it to make them more noticeable while Bernie wished she could've slipped inside with the large crowd. The castle was bustling and loud, with well-dressed people from all over the continent there to celebrate with the king and queen of Faerghus, but there were still places that she was able to slip away to once they were inside and the others were drawn into their attempts at socialization.

The place Bernie found that was quiet and mostly empty was a set of chairs nestled in between a few plants, and she sat down without even checking to see if Dorothea or Ferdinand had chosen to follow her. "Excuse me, who said you could be here?" a voice asked her that wasn't familiar, and for what felt like the millionth time that day she shrieked in surprise at being noticed. "That isn't an answer, and I would appreciate it if you would leave. Now. This isn't your place."

"You aren't the king, you can't tell me to leave." The confidence with which Bernie said those words came out of nowhere, and the dark-haired man she said them to looked to be shocked to hear her say anything at all. "There are other chairs, you can sit with me or you can find somewhere else."

"Mouthy, aren't we? If it wasn't for the boar telling me to keep the weapons at home, I'd have you executed on sight for that." He looked uncomfortable to be making such a threat but he eventually gave in and sat down as far from Bernie's seat as possible. "This is my place where I go to get away when others are here. No one else ever shows up here, then suddenly there's a girl in a gown here invading my space."

She shrugged, looking at him carefully now that he was further away and that he was known to not be armed. "I found it and I don't like people, so I sat down. Wasn't expecting to have a guy threaten me when I got here."

"That's fair." He shut his mouth and the air between them fell silent, even though the ambient noise from the rest of the ball was prevalent around them. No one else seemed to come join them, and Bernie was fine with that, as well as fine with the man keeping his voice off, but then he spoke again. "The only other person who joined me here came at the coronation ball when the boar took the throne. Never got her name, she just…sat there and started singing after a while."

In Bernie's chest the mention of singing made her heart start to beat faster, and she thought back to what Annette had told her to do. Something about a songbird, wasn't it? "Bet she was a lovely singer. I live with one of those, former singer for an opera in Adrestia. It wasn't her singing for you, was it?"

"This girl wasn't trained, so I doubt it. She sat there and sang, then told me to keep an ear out for her in the future and that was it. Never saw her around here again, nor did I ever see her in the town. Fhirdiad isn't that large of a place, she couldn't have gotten far." He shook his head, before pulling at the collar of his shirt. "Didn't expect to just throw all that at you, sorry about that."

"I don't mind it," she replied, finding it strange that she would say such a thing. She usually hated social interaction, she usually couldn't stand talking to anyone, especially people she didn't know, so why was she suddenly okay with this man talking to her? Bernie was at a complete loss as to what was happening to her, and that was when Annette's exact words hit her: "Your songbird misses singing for you, I know I need to tell you that. I don't know why it is, but I do."

He sat up straighter, looking at Bernie with murderous intent in his eyes for a moment before relaxing. "Good to know, glad to hear she's speaking through someone. Hopefully wherever she's gotten off to, she's happier than she was that night singing for me. Never was a good audience for that sort of thing." He stood up not long after that and walked out into the ball, leaving Bernie completely stunned in his wake. She'd just managed to slip herself directly into the situation Annette had prepared her for, and now she had finished her task without breaking down and crying. All that was left was for her to survive the night and then she'd be set for life.

The world wasn't going to let Bernie have the victory that easily, though, as soon a different man came into sight, his orange hair reminiscent of Ferdinand's to a point, with a blonde woman on each of his arms. "This is the one, yeah?" he asked his female companions, both of whom nodded, and he laughed. "Great! We need you to come with us for a second, if that's fine with you. Your feet aren't hurting too bad from dancing, are they?"

"Haven't danced at all," Bernie answered, before the two ladies offered her their free hands to get her to her feet. "In fact, I've really just been over here, so I…don't know how any of you would know who I am."

"That doesn't matter, does it?" Laughing again, the man let go of the ladies so that they could all turn around and start heading elsewhere in the castle, the three women following his lead. "I think you're going to love what's coming for you. I'm a bit bummed I wasn't allowed to do it, but—"

"It was a blessing to all of the ladies that you aren't allowed," one of the women said, while the other had to stifle her laughter into her shoulder. "You get too weird with the women when you're flirting sometimes, Sylvain, it would just be an embarrassment to yourself and to whoever you picked."

"—fair, but couldn't you be a little nicer in front of the new girl, Ingrid? Now someone I've barely met knows all my secrets!" They were heading up some stairs, Bernie feeling apprehensive mentally but physically she couldn't care less about what was happening to her. She was so accustomed to hating being dragged places that she was surprised that she hadn't lashed out at the two women still holding her hands, but they seemed so friendly and she felt so confident in herself in that moment that she couldn't think about how she'd feel if she hated what was about to happen.

The king was seated on his throne at the top of the stairs, watching as the group came up. "You stay right here, I've got to ask where we're supposed to take you," Sylvain told Bernie, before hopping over to the king and engaging in discussion with him. They were pointed towards a holding room behind the throne, the king watching them go with his single visible eye as they left his sight and entered the room. Inside were several other people, none of which looked familiar to Bernie at first, until she saw the man she'd been talking to before across the room, leaning against the wall.

As Sylvain closed the door to the room, the two ladies let go of her and went to go talk to some of the others, leaving her to finally begin to regret being so accepting of what was going on. She didn't know what they wanted her there for, nor did she know why she, out of everyone there, would be chosen for it, but she couldn't escape, Sylvain was making sure of that. "Oh, you must have been selected for someone," a man said to her, coming up to her with a shaky smile on his face full of freckles. "It will all be okay, you shouldn't look so nervous about things. Maybe you'll even be dancing with me once we're out there."

"Dancing? With a stranger?" Bernie sounded scared, because she was starting to come to terms with the fact that she was way out of her comfort zone. "I don't know how to dance, and I definitely don't do well dancing in front of people I don't know! Someone has to save me, I'm going to die out there!"

"Calm down, it'll all be fine," he assured her, waving his hands to try and calm her. "I remember the first time I had to do this, it was terrifying but I survived it. But I was told I wouldn't do it again, and yet…here I am."

Coming up behind the man was someone much taller, who immediately made Bernie feel scared that she was going to be hurt in some way based solely on the new man's size. "Cheer up, we will have an excellent time taking part in this. Remember, it is for King Dimitri first and foremost." He then bowed his head at Bernie. "You will be fine doing this too, since it is your first time. I am certain of that."

"You should listen to Dedue, he knows a thing or two about this," the first man said with his smile gaining confidence. "He's going to be doing the demonstration for everyone, but I wonder who it will be with this time. It was…Ingrid last time, wasn't it?"

"It was," Dedue replied, while Bernie was able to put a face to that name, since she'd heard Sylvain use it before. "I would assume that means I will be demonstrating with Mercedes this time, but only time will tell." These two men seemed genuinely kind and welcoming, and Bernie spent a bit of time talking to them, getting to know more about what was happening and why she may have been chosen for the endeavor. They made it clear that it was something that happened at all of the dances in Faerghus, and that strangers were meant to dance together to build companionship, but usually you had to do it one time and then you were exempt from it at all future balls and get-togethers.

Something was clearly amiss regarding that, though, and she knew they noticed it when they were talking about it, but no one was willing to call attention to it. "Okay, gather around, it's time to get this all sorted out," Sylvain called throughout the room, getting everyone to move towards the door in their finest attire, most of them staying socially separate from those around them. That made Bernie feel strange, knowing that she had just spent time talking to two of the men. "Ingrid and I will be showing you all the ropes, then Dedue and Mercedes will take the floor out in the hall to show everyone else, and then you all, our lovely candidates for the evening, will be showing off what you've learned."

"I'm not kissing you," Ingrid said, seemingly out of nowhere, but after she and Sylvain began their slow, slightly romantic dance it became clear that they were leading up to the grand finale being a true kiss.

And that fact struck Bernie much like a bolt of lightning, and she didn't know how to process it. Annette had warned her about kissing, and she'd done it specifically because she'd known that this was going to happen. She'd known from the very start that of all the people invited to the ball, it would be Bernie herself selected to dance with that man, with a tradition that the dance ended on a kiss, and she was going to make a total fool of herself in front of everyone else. She couldn't escape what she'd been set up for, and she didn't know how to get out of doing the dance, aside from injuring herself right there and hoping everyone would take pity on her.

"You will handle this just fine, every man you could be dancing with will be gentle," Dedue assured her, giving her a gentle pat on the shoulder as the first demonstration dance wrapped up and he had to take the arm of the other blonde woman and leave the room ahead of everyone else. If it was him that she was dancing with, she would've been able to handle it, as well as the other man she was standing beside, but she knew that she wasn't fated to dance with either of them.

Her being assigned her partner came last, with Sylvain looking rather smug as he pointed her in the direction of the dark-haired man from before. "Felix won't bite too much if you decide to give him a little tongue," he teased, pushing her in his direction even as she dragged her feet. "Go on, make yourself feel like the happiest woman alive, he'll enjoy it."

"So we meet again, this time on the dancefloor," Felix said with a scowl when he saw that it was Bernie approaching him. "They could have been nice and given me the wallflower, but I suppose that pairing her with Ashe would make up for dragging him into this again. And here I was, thinking I was immune from this sort of thing."

"They really picked me at random, huh?" she mumbled, seeing that Felix didn't seem interested in doing this with her. He couldn't have knowingly set this up, only to turn around and seem so distant about things. "Do we have to do this?"

"Unfortunately, yes. We'll make it quick, put on a few steps for the crowd and go our separate ways, and you can tell my songbird that I never want to hear her singing again if she had anything to do with this." Felix was watching everyone else starting to leave the room and nodded in the direction of the door, getting Bernie to look that way as well. "Come, let's get this over with so I can find that bird and give her a piece of my mind."

Fearing that if the dance went off without a hitch, there'd be more reasons for Annette to get an earful about the occasion, Bernie was barely able to convince herself to follow, but follow she did, and they were back out in the main hall in no time. Down the stairs they walked, everyone in front of them walking side by side and so they did as well, strangers who may have known each other better than anyone else taking part in the dancing. The crowd was circled around part of the dance floor, where Dedue and Mercedes had just finished up their performance, and everyone else was coupling up to do the same. Bernie spotted Ferdinand and Dorothea in two different places in the crowd, and hoping that they didn't see her she meekly took her position in Felix's arms and hoped for the best.

The dance itself went fine for them, although it wasn't quite as positive for some of the other couples. The kind man Ashe and his partner were right next to them, and Bernie could see the terror in his blue-haired dancing companion's eyes as they all twirled around the floor, but she was certain that the level of terror she felt was higher than the other woman's. She was going to doom herself and her friends to a lifetime of living in post-war poverty in Adrestia if she had to actually kiss Felix, and she couldn't bear to do that to them.

High up in the rafters of the hall, an orange bird watched over everyone and noticed that what she'd set up had happened just like she predicted, and she clacked her feet against the beam she was resting on. Annette couldn't help that she'd lost control of her magic studies and been forced to be a bird-fairy for the rest of her life, but she could bring happiness to a girl who needed it, and the boy that she'd thought she could impress with her vocal talents once upon a time.

When the time for the finale kiss came, Bernie decided that it was better to look like a fool once than cause drama she wasn't prepared to handle, and she let the tradition go off without a hitch. She had been expecting some kind of dramatic explosion, or perhaps everyone being murdered, when the spell that had made her look so lovely wore off, but when their kiss ended and she looked and felt exactly the same she knew that something wasn't right. "I don't think I've gotten your name yet tonight," Felix said, looking into Bernie's eyes with a coldness that made her shiver, but with a gentleness that he hadn't had before. "You were a decent enough partner for this, all things considered, but I need your name."

"Bernadetta von Varley, what business do _you_ have dancing with a member of the royal staff?" Dorothea asked over the din of the crowd around them, and Bernie flinched at hearing her name said in such a tone. "I cannot believe this, you were supposed to come and not distract everyone from Ferdie and myself, but look at what you've done!"

"And who, exactly, are you?" Felix shot back, as Dorothea pushed her way up to being next to them, stunning her into a silence she couldn't recover from. "My thoughts exactly. Bernadetta, was it? Shall we go back to our quiet place and get to know each other a bit better? My invitation, no threats of removal."

For the second time that day, she knew exactly how to answer the questions posed to her, albeit in a slightly different form. "Bernie. Yes."

* * *

The dreams seemed to be coming in with less force and more interference with the outside world, as Bernadetta had been dreaming about several people who had been in the room with her when she'd dozed off, who had been missing when she woke up ferociously ready to write down what she'd thought up. Felix found her writing speed impressive as always, and read over her shoulder as she penned down every last word of the story she'd created in her sleep.

Like before, he invited others to read what she'd written down, but this time he did it without her anywhere nearby, taking the notebook with him to the castle that she seemed to fixate on so much in her dreams. "You won't let her give copies of this to people as it is, will you?" he asked the person reading it, who looked back at him with a faint smile as she shook her head, light green hair bouncing as she did. "I figured about as much. I'm sure Bernie has done some thinking about how she'll edit these herself, but we may need some assistance when the time comes."

"You're lucky to have caught me here, I was about to head back to the monastery and you know that Dima wouldn't be quite as understanding about this if you approached him right after I left." The radiant queen of Faerghus handed back the book to Felix's waiting hands, before gesturing towards a holding room very similar to one Bernadetta had recently described in her writing. "You can certainly ask for his opinion on the matter, though, if you won't take my word for it."

"No need. Your word is as good as his, if not better." Thanking his former professor for the guidance he needed, Felix began to leave, only to stop and turn around, seeing the queen running a hand back through her hair to brush it out of her face. "Actually, since I'm here, there's something else I need to confer with you about. A…personal matter, if you will."

The small smile on Byleth's lips disappeared as she saw the intense expression brewing on Felix's face. "I'll get Dimitri and we can discuss this all together. I have a hunch he will be much more helpful in this matter than I will."

* * *

**A/N: I really enjoyed writing this one! sadly the next chapter is the last D:**


	6. Bernie in Wonderland

The gentle breeze blowing through the field was causing the flowers to knock into one another, the grasses waving their long stems all around, and when it got to the tree Bernie had settled under it whistled through the branches but ultimately left her alone. "A perfect day to do some writing," she said cheerfully to herself, cracking open the cover of the empty notebook she'd brought with her for that very reason. "I can get so much done just sitting out here, all by myself, not a single person around to bother me. This is the life for Bernie, that's for sure!"

She fished out a pen from inside her bag and put it to the paper, but some unfamiliar movement out of the corner of her eye made her drop it immediately. It didn't seem to be the grass or the flowers, and it hadn't sounded like a bird, which put her on edge. She was out in the middle of a field to be _alone_, there should have been no way that anyone would've followed her out there! After doing a quick check of her surroundings again she settled back down and got to the same point before she saw it again, a flash of black and white against the green grasses. "Okay, t-that's it, if you're here to spy on me I'll take care of it myself!" she shouted, tucking the notebook and the pen back into the bag before standing up, preparing to scale the tree to get alone from whatever was insistent on bothering her.

That was when she was able to actually make out what was around her, and the sight of the black and white rabbit running around on two legs was enough to nearly make her drop in surprise. "I'm going to kill whoever decided it'd be fun to send me in the wrong direction so soon before an important meeting," the rabbit grumbled as it came closer to the tree, not noticing Bernie as it went around and around in circles. She found herself quickly getting hypnotized by its motion, until it reached the base of the tree right near where she'd been sitting and disappeared into a clump of tall grasses she'd been using as a backrest.

Curiosity getting the better of her, she crouched down and pushed into the grasses, finding that it went deeper than the tree was round—a perfect hiding hole for some so averse to human contact as herself. "I'll just write in here," she declared, crawling into the hole she never would've found if not for the rabbit, and the moment the grasses closed in behind her the ground disappeared out from underneath her and she went falling downward, her bag flying off of her arm and vanishing into the darkness she was slipping into.

Her screams started out loud but soon did as the bag had and disappeared entirely, even though she knew she was still screaming. Around her, the darkness began to turn to light, then more darkness, then vivid colors and patterns that weren't natural by any means; Bernie was lost, confused, and had no way of knowing what was going to happen to her once she hit the ground, and the wild scenery she was falling through was not doing her any favors. But just as she was beginning to accept that this was the end for her, she realized that she wasn't _falling_ so much as she was _floating_, and she gently drifted downward until she collided with the ground she'd previously lost.

"Well, so much for a day spent writing," she said, brushing herself off and getting back to her feet, looking up into the pitch-black abyss before turning her attention to the bare surroundings she now had. "Now how do I get out of this place? This might be a big problem, but at least I'm…"

Her last word was intended to be "alone", but as she was going to say it the rabbit reappeared, looking just as frantic as it had when they'd been underneath the tree. "This is beyond stupid," it griped, dashing past her and off into the distance, and without thinking much of it she began to chase it, calling for it to stop and to help her out. She was able to catch up to the rabbit when they got to a small door, perfect sized for the rabbit to get through but much too small for a human like Bernie. As it passed through the doorway, it shouted something about how its threats needed to be taken seriously, and then it was back to the eerie silence the once again dark area held.

As much as she wanted to get out of where she was, if only because it was dark and slightly more claustrophobic than being locked in her room was, Bernie's attention was on something else entirely. "I must find out what is going on with that little rabbit." She looked at the door, which had closed in the rabbit's wake, and she looked at herself, realizing that even if she was crawling around like she had to get through the tree, she would never fit through the doorway. "Hm, I'm not…sure what I'm supposed to do here."

"His Majesty prohibits entry of anyone he is unfamiliar with," a voice said out of nowhere, which spooked Bernie until she looked closer at the door, which had a stern face drawn on it. "You may not enter under any circumstances."

"Did…you just speak to me?" she asked, looking at the door's face and how she could have sworn it was moving when she was hearing those words. "You're a door, you can't possibly be talking!"

"I am not merely a door, I am a knight and guard in the duty of His Majesty. You may either turn back and leave, or face consequences that may result in your death." The threat of death was terrifying enough to Bernie, but the fact that it was a wooden door giving her the threat made it completely bizarre. She wanted to protest, but it was not in her nature to pick fights with anything, whether it was a human or a door, and so she turned to go walk back towards where she'd fallen in from.

She made it only a few steps before she noticed a table she hadn't seen before, its top reaching just below her hips. Surprised that she'd run right past it in her chase of the rabbit, she looked at what it had on top and found that it had two different food items: one bottle of liquid labeled _drink me_ and one plate of cookies labeled _eat me_. "I did lose my snack when I lost my bag, and I am getting kind of hungry…" She pushed past any logical reasoning and reached for one of the cookies, taking a bite of it and finding it to be one of the most delicious baked goods she'd had in her life. With every swallow she felt a strange sensation coursing through her from head to toe, but she didn't notice anything different until the cookie was gone and she was staring at some large, dark statue of sorts right next to her. Knowing for a fact she hadn't seen that before, she looked to investigate it, and found that the statue was actually a table leg, and that she'd shrunk down to a microscopic size while eating the cookie.

Screaming, she grabbed the sides of her hair and began to panic, her breathing growing erratic as she couldn't figure out what she needed to do next. She was certain that if she went back over to the door, she'd be turned away even at such a tiny size, and she already didn't know anywhere else to go, but being a fraction of her normal height was going to make everything so much harder. It was in the middle of her panic that she noticed a tiny bow and arrow resting on the table leg, and once she'd collected herself enough to function properly she went over to it, investigating it. "For use when you need to make a big explosion," she read off of its label, before shrugging and grabbing it, testing how taut the string was before nocking an arrow and aiming towards the tabletop.

When the arrow flew and connected with the table, she expected a small rumble and that to be the end of the road for the plan. Instead, the whole room rocked with how hard it exploded, and the table tipped over, sending the rest of the cookies and the bottle of water falling to the ground. The bottle had seemed so small when it was up there, but it flooded the entire area at once, and she found herself drowning, taking in large gulps of water with every attempted breath. "Oh no, this will not do, I refuse to take in so much of this vile liquid," the door said, swinging open and pulling all of the floodwaters—as well as the rapidly-growing Bernie—through it, closing once the room was once again dry.

She found herself able to breathe once more once she was on the other side, although she felt positive gigantic compared to the flora and fauna she was surrounded by. Even as she was sitting her head was near the treetops, and she could only imagine what would happen if she chose to stand up. "Changing the meeting place, changing who it's with, who do they think I am around here?" she heard the rabbit complaining, but her head was so high up that she couldn't see the familiar black and white body and wherever it was going, and so she felt that chasing it further was a lost cause.

"First and foremost, I need to get back to normal size," she decided, adjusting so that she was crawling around to move in her current state. Even though she was much larger than she'd ever been, her limbs were the same proportion as always, and that meant her only issue came in not being able to fit through branched archways, but she was able to move deeper into the forest that she'd ended up in. "This is by far the weirdest thing I've ever had to go through, I don't think I've ever imagined such craziness happening to me!"

Bernie made her way towards a house that was about her size on all fours, more reminiscent of a dollhouse than one people would live in. Outside of its front door was a tiny table with two tiny containers on it, and even with trying to squint to read the labels she couldn't manage to do so, which meant she'd have to act blindly. "The cookies made me small last time, so…let's go with that again," she said, carefully picking up a cookie with her fingernails. She was able to toss it into her mouth with ease, and immediately she felt herself shrinking to a more reasonable size, and after a second cookie she felt like she was back to normal. The house's front door was wide open when she finally stopped shrinking in front of it, and she had to convince herself that it was not worth the effort of going inside to investigate it, even though it looked rather inviting.

"I need to find my way home, that's all I need right now. This is far too much adventure for someone like me." She felt proud of not letting herself get distracted by the house, and soon she was trekking through the nearby woods, looking for any signs of how to get back to her peaceful tree in the field. When she came to a clearing she stopped to catch her breath, reclining against a fallen log, but while she was sitting there she could hear something rustling in a nearby bush. After the adventure she'd already had, it was enough to spook her but not enough to make her completely lose her mind in panicking, but when the giant, furry blue creature came out from the woods to meet her there in the clearing she did emit a single loud scream.

"Please, it's not necessary to be so loud," the creature said to her, and she realized that it looked to be a human man, just coated in fur that looked to be a robe, once upon a time. "I know my appearance may be…revolting, but you do not need to treat me with such disrespect. As the former king of this world you should have manners when addressing me, even if I have been cursed to look like this monstrosity."

Covering her mouth to keep herself from screaming further, Bernie watched the creature approach her, and once he was an arm's length away she could finally see the very human face that was obscured by the deep blue fur. "Who would have cursed a king?" she asked, timid in speaking to someone who claimed nobility. "That would never happen where I came from, the emperor would kill anyone on sight if they tried cursing her."

"Someone who wanted to take the throne for themselves." His reply came with a heavy sigh, as he lumbered to rest against the same log she was using. "They took my throne, they cursed me to become one with my robes, and for what? To boss everyone around and pretend they're the king now?"

Bernie was not a fan of conflict and confrontation, and she was beginning to suspect that if she stuck around talking to the furry king, she would get roped into some journey of vengeance on his behalf. "I'm so sorry, but I don't think there's much I can do to help you," she admitted, pushing herself up off of the log and running out of the clearing, hearing his grumbles being left behind. Once she was back on what looked like a normal path she clutched her chest and assured herself that what she did was the best thing she could have done, because she was already in such an unfamiliar place, she didn't need to add on another task to her list of things to do.

She walked along the path for some time, not finding much other than the same trees she felt she was always passing. Actually, it seemed highly likely that she was just walking around and around in circles, something that she caught on to when she noticed the same crooked branch overhead many times in a row. "Oh no, now I'm going to be the one getting cursed!" she cried, beginning to run down the path faster. "Someone's got me right in their trap and I'm never going to make it home at this rate!"

"Where's that damned castle at, I'm already late and I'm going to murder whoever changed where we're having this meeting," the rabbit's voice loudly said, stopping her in her tracks from her panicked sprint. In the distance, she could see the black and white body hopping along, only to disappear into the side of the path—and she, against all better judgment, ran to where she'd thought she'd seen it and tried to follow its footsteps a second time. The bushes were easy to push through, and she found herself on a different path within seconds, this one fenced on both sides with signs pointing in the direction she could see the rabbit going.

Just like always, before she could do anything about it the rabbit disappeared, this time going past the fence into what looked like a courtyard, but when Bernie got to where it has turned off she found two women standing there, blocking the way. "Who are you?" one of them asked, bringing her hands together in front of her face and seething at Bernie. "I wasn't expecting anyone coming to our party today."

"She doesn't look like someone from around here!" the second one exclaimed, tugging on her long, pink ponytail to restrain herself. "Come on, we've got to get a third spot set up for our special guest, we can't just have her come in and not have something ready for her! Go, go, get her some cake, Lysithea!"

The first one who'd spoken, seemingly named Lysithea, had lit up at the mention of cake, even though she did not seem pleased at the idea of having to get any for a stranger, but she went into the little courtyard on her own, leaving the other to wave Bernie through. "Oh, no, I don't think I have time right now for a party," she declined, the pink-haired woman pouting at being turned down. "I'm looking for a rabbit, you see."

"A rabbit? Can't say I've seen one of those around here. Usually we deal with deer." She twisted her hair for a few seconds before shrugging and turning around, flouncing into the courtyard after her friend, and Bernie considered leaving down the path once more, but she decided that if they were having a party, maybe it wouldn't be so bad to stick around.

"Hilda, there's some creature in here!" Lysithea yelled, sounding like it was an urgent matter, but Hilda's pace did not change in the slightest. That meant, when they were properly inside the yard and approaching the long, heavily-decorated table that was set up there, they saw the black and white rabbit sitting in one of the chairs, muttering to itself, while Lysithea stood across the table from it, holding onto a cake for dear life. "It was just bouncing around while I was getting things ready, then told me to give me some of our cake to make up for the time I was wasting!"

Unable to believe her eyes, Bernie ran past Hilda and went over to where the rabbit was sitting, bending down to get closer to it. "You're really real, and here!"

"Of course I'm real, and of course I'm here, I need to get a piece of this cake to keep my sanity before I get to that meeting. You try dealing with the nonsense I handle, you'd turn to sweets too." The rabbit seemed to be sneering at Bernie, causing her to back away in surprise, and she looked at the two women whose party they'd intruded on. "Give me a piece, and one for the girl here, and we'll both be on our way."

"Cake is only for party guests, I worked too hard to make it to give it away like that," Lysithea shot in return, before Hilda told her to just give into the demand and hope that the unfamiliar creature would leave them alone. "Fine, I guess they can have some. Not much, but some."

Soon they were both given pieces on individual plates, adorned with yellow deer that seemed to move across the material even without the plate itself moving. The rabbit ate its piece almost instantly, while Bernie hesitated to make sure there were no ill effects on it before she did the same. It was delicious, almost like the cookies from earlier in her adventure, but it tasted like it was missing something important, an ingredient that she couldn't place a finger on. But there was no time for dwelling on that, because the rabbit had gotten out of its chair and was continuing on its way, and rather than being left at the party with the two ladies she knew she needed to be diligent in following.

Now that the rabbit knew that she was following it, it made sure to not lose her as it traveled through the strange countryside, leaving the woods behind entirely. They went on for what felt like simply forever, Bernie finding herself getting more tired with every step, but the rabbit continued on without any slowing in its steps. Finally, as the daytime sun began to slip onto the horizon, they approached a grand lawn with tall, neatly-trimmed bushes that towered over them both. "Great, I'm late and I'm never going to hear the end of it," the rabbit complained, going towards the apparent entrance to the lawn. "You come too, the new king will be pleased to see you."

"You're taking me straight to your king?" Bernie asked, thinking about the fur-covered man she'd found earlier in the day (how had that been earlier in _that_ day?) and how he'd claimed to have been cursed and removed from his post as king. "That's fortunate. Do you think he'll be able to send me home?"

"He'll do something to you, that might be one option." Hopping right through the entrance and into the vast gardens that marked the beginning of the royal territory, the rabbit checked over its shoulder every few seconds to make sure Bernie didn't get separated from it due to any of the distractions the gardens held. There were so many flowers she'd never seen before, blossoms blooming on giant trees and bushes that were being tended to by a bunch of faceless foot-soldiers. The fact that she could feel like they were staring right at her but they had no eyes or mouths to speak of was unnerving, but she didn't let it sidetrack her from what she was there to do.

When they came up to the front door of the palace, the rabbit stepped aside and gestured for Bernie to knock at the door. "Why do I have to do it?" she asked. "Aren't you here for a meeting? Shouldn't you knock?"

"Ladies first," the rabbit told her. "It's the king's request that it always be ladies first."

She braced herself for what could happen when she knocked, but the rabbit was pressuring her to just go through with it, and so she gave the door a solid, heavy knock with her fist. All it took was one before the door swung open, no one around to have opened it, and a sweet-sounding voice told them to enter. "That wasn't so bad," she remarked to herself, as she and the rabbit both went inside. "If the first door I'd entered had been that nice, I would've felt a lot better about being around here!"

"The first door still needs replacing after the change in leadership. He's still loyal to the former king, that nasty boar of a man. He got what he deserved when the new king took his place." Having not found any reason to not like the cursed king in the woods, Bernie felt like the rabbit was being a tad bit harsh about things, but she wasn't familiar with the way things worked in this world, so she felt her opinion might have been invalid. "I'm beginning to think that you'll do nicely for the king, he could use a woman like you around here."

"What do you mean, use a woman like me? Those ladies at the party seemed nice, why wouldn't they work?" That was when the rabbit got to explain that there were two types of people in their world, and that the women belonged in one category while their king belonged in another. She didn't understand a word of it—there was a strange amount of calling people deer and lions and she didn't get why it was—but before she could ask any clarifying questions the rabbit had shushed itself as a clearly human man with red hair and an outstretched hand came into view.

"You're late, Felix," the man said towards the rabbit, who spat a few curses before bounding off into the background, while the man continued his approach. "And you must be the girl from the other world. What brings you here?"

"Following…him," Bernie replied, trying to find Felix with her eyes but being unable to do so, before noticing that the man's hand he was holding out had a little bow and eyes drawn on it. "What's with the hand puppet?"

He scoffed, looking at what she'd just referred to. "That's the Queen of Hearts," he replied, bringing his hand to his face to give it a kiss, "and you may refer to me as the King." Horrified at what she was witnessing, even though the kiss itself was a peck, Bernie tried to run past him to continue chasing the rabbit, but he'd long since disappeared. "Hey, where do you think you're going?"

"Home!" she screamed, emotions getting the better of her. "I don't want to be here anymore! I don't know what's going on, I don't know where I am, I don't know…I just don't know!"

"Aw, did Felix not tell you anything when he found you? You're in the kingdom of Faerghus, which is under new management by myself, the King of Hearts, the esteemed Sylvain Gautier, and you're not going anywhere. Not on my watch, anyway."

"Why won't you let me leave?" Falling to her knees and sobbing, Bernie could feel tears streaming down her cheeks but none never fell off her chin; rather, the teardrops pooled on her skin until she brushed them away. "I hate whatever magic is happening here, I hate how this isn't home and isn't anything like home! Let me go back to Adrestia!"

The man held out his decorated hand, the face looking just as innocent as it had the first time he'd done it. "I don't know why you'd ever want to go back to such a traitorous place," he said, even though he was moving the hand to mimic it talking. "You could have everything you've ever wanted here in Faerghus if you played along. We know about your father, Bernie, and we know about everything he's put you through. Just…let us help you."

"Who told you my name? How'd you learn about my father?" Wiping more tears off and flicking the floating drops in the hand's direction, Bernie felt footsteps coming towards her and she panicked, dropping herself to as low to the ground as she could manage. "I'm going to die here, you've been watching me and I—I'm not going to make it home!"

"Will you stop crying and collect yourself?" The voice belonged to the rabbit she'd trusted this far, and yet when Bernie looked up there was a different man standing in front of her, looking down at her with the sneer she'd sworn to have seen on the rabbit's face before. "I may or may not have been keeping tabs on you for a while now, to get you somewhere safe. Unfortunately for us, the former king wasn't quite as thrilled with me saving a girl that wasn't going to be native to Faerghus if she wasn't meant for him, so we pulled some strings, got him off the throne, and got you here."

"You deposed a king…for me?"

The human Felix shrugged, his dark hair and pale skin matching the colors of the rabbit he'd been posing as. "Among other things. Sylvain's had the time of his life pretending to be king, but we all know that he's losing the throne as soon as we find a better replacement for the boar who once lived here."

"Treason against your best friend and the man ruling your land? I think that's grounds for punishment," Sylvain said with a laugh, using his decorated hand to snap as loud as he could, several of the faceless guards coming to meet his call. "Get Felix and the girl, and show them what it's like to get on the wrong side of me!"

Bernie was scrambling to her feet as Felix jumped between her and the guards, brandishing a sword out of thin air. "I'll put a stop to this, to keep you safe," he promised her, and she felt there was no option but to believe him. As she watched, he took down every guard that had come, slicing through them and watching them turn to dust that blew away much like the tears had. Sylvain saw this and grabbed a sword of his own, awkwardly holding it in his bare hand before charging at Felix, who must have assumed that Bernie knew to jump when he did, because he ducked out of the way and let her take the full blow, knocking her backwards and causing her to hit her head on the ground and making the world go dark around her.

Her eyes fluttered open and she found herself in front of a familiar door, which was looking at her with disapproval. "I told you that His Majesty would not approve entry of someone he is unfamiliar with," the voice at the door said. "However you still managed to get inside and cause issues for yourself."

"Your king has been overthrown and his replacement's mad with power!" she tried explaining, but the door didn't seem to believe a word of it. "I was facing off against him with a rabbit, well he wasn't much of a rabbit anymore so much as a man, and I took a hit from a sword and woke up here rather than where I was. Could you let me back through so that I could help Felix win the battle?"

"There is no need for that." Felix's voice came from the darkness that surrounded that door, and to Bernie's surprise he stepped out of the shadow, looking every bit of the man that she'd been following while on the other side. "The battle was won, the proper king given back his throne, and my exile for being willing to conspire thrown down. Let's get you home, since that's what you so badly wanted out of things, and then I'll find my own way back inside where I'm no longer wanted. Your happiness comes first."

Seeing him there as a person, rather than a rabbit, was strange enough, but there was a warmth that filled Bernie's heart when she heard him talk about what he was going to do for her. "No, I think your happiness matters more," she told him with a smile, "and mine can come second. Let's get you back inside, together."

"Are you mad? You could be killed if you reenter alongside me! I couldn't risk such a thing for someone as innocent as you. Why, if I wasn't planning on making sure you stayed safe at home, I would—

* * *

The retelling of the story ended abruptly as Bernadetta turned the page in her notebook and found it to already have been written on, and she couldn't help herself but read what was penned on the page by someone else's hand. _Dearest Bernie_, it began, in the stiff, slightly illegible handwriting that she knew to belong to Felix, _I have been watching you feverishly writing these tales down after every dream you've had for weeks now. Day after day you write something new, something charming and completely illogical in this world, and you seem to enjoy your days being spent with sleeping and writing._

_As entertained I am by your daily endeavors in your dreams, I must say that I miss having the you that I fell in love with fighting alongside on the battlefield. I miss having the woman whose heart brimmed with affection for someone who, rightfully, didn't deserve it at most times. I miss your presence as an actual person, not just someone who writes stories for the enjoyment of future generations in the world around us. But if you are truly happy continuing doing this, then by all means disregard this message and keep writing your stories as you have been._

_If you are not happy, and you miss the version of yourself that once loved living alongside me in the real world, please close this book and find me elsewhere in the house. The choice is yours and yours alone._

_With affection, Felix_

She felt her heart beating faster with every word she read, to the point that she had to look away to keep herself from losing her concentration on the meaning of the words. Felix missed her being herself, even though the writing of the stories had come at his insistence, him not realizing how into the endeavor she would have gotten when he'd first prepared for her to partake in it. He'd enjoyed reading the stories, this much she knew to be true, but there was so much that he was missing out on by her devoting every moment of her time to writing her dreams down to catalogue them.

The decision to close the book and set it on her pillow with the pen resting next to it was a simple one to make, and after realizing that she'd never finish the story she'd started, having already forgotten where it went, she got out of the bed and walked with tired, weak legs out of the room. She'd expected to need to search high and low for Felix, but he was sitting right outside of the door, near where she'd initially fallen and started the whole issue in the first place. "I see which option you went with," he said with a voice that was trying hard not to show any strong emotions, but she could tell he was brimming with happiness under his rough exterior. "It's good to see you out among the living again, Bernadetta."

"If you missed me so much, why didn't you tell me out loud?" she asked him, as he stood up and tossed aside the book he'd been reading from, presumably because he'd been waiting there for a while. "You're not afraid to tell me how you feel, usually."

He seemed to freeze at the question, before tilting his head back to look up at the ceiling. "I know that I could have told you those things out loud, but there was something more important that I wanted to save my spoken words for. Something that spending this time caring for you as your head healed and you came back to being yourself made me realize I needed to do sooner rather than later."

"What is it?" She could feel her every breath catching in her throat as she watched him fiddle with something behind his back, bringing both hands around with them closed into fists that he offered towards her. "I…don't think I get it, Felix. Do you want me to pick one? Is that what we're doing here?"

"That was what I thought would make this easiest, but…" He pulled one hand back, so that it was just the single fist waiting for her to select it. "Go on, open it."

There was obvious trepidation as Bernadetta reached toward the hand, flipping it over and carefully prying his fingers open—to reveal an heirloom ring waiting in his palm. "W-what is this about?" she squeaked, shrinking back immediately. "I thought you said we…that there wasn't…we weren't…"

"It felt like it was an appropriate time to put an official mark on our relationship, one that others could see for themselves. I've spoken with the king and the archbishop, they are willing to expedite the process for us and give us a small ceremony whenever I say the word." Felix could see that Bernadetta was beginning to tear up, and he closed his hand around the ring to remove it from her sight. "Don't think I'm going to allow there to be a single soul present for the vows beyond the two of them, my dear. This will be just as private as everything up to this point has been."

"You mean, we'll be having a wedding with no guests? But won't there be expectations? Oh, I don't know if I can handle this, if my father finds out I'll—"

He silenced her with hitting the wall with his other hand, the noise enough to make her jolt and forget what she was saying. "Damn your father if he tries to intrude on what will be the best day of your life! This was not an easy agreement to come by, and it will take quite the payment for us to make it work, but I have faith that it will all happen as I've planned."

"Payment? What kind of payment?" Already she was predicting the worst, having to sign away her loyalty to the church and to the king, or to give up any children they may have eventually had to knighthood without a second thought. "I-I don't know if Bernie's poor heart can handle much in the way of a harsh payment."

"The boar requested a copy of your stories, names all changed, and the archbishop wants one for curricular purposes at the academy. That's the only payment they require, and I assumed you'd be more than willing to deliver." Felix watched as her whole demeanor changed, her realizing that what he'd promised to get them what she wanted would be an easy payment to fill after all. Soon she was smiling, no longer in tears, and once he knew she was comfortable enough to take it he had slid that proper engagement ring on her finger, following it immediately with: "So, with the last page in your notebook, shall we write a letter requesting a date for the wedding that works for both the king and his queen?"

"A date and some more books for me to write their stories in," she replied, a sense of happiness that she'd only felt in fiction recently washing over her. "I've got to start planning what I'm changing everyone's name to, that's a huge task to take on!"

"I can suggest a change for your name," he said, leaning in to kiss her forehead gently, "but it might not be one you want to write in your books."

* * *

**A/N: and there we have it! I hope everyone enjoyed the fic! c:**


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